Yandex is teaming up with Jd.com to increase cross border trade from China into Russia. Yandex Market is a joint venture between Russian search engine Yandex and Russia’s largest bank Sberbank. They have signed a strategic deal with JD.com according to Interfax.
Yandex.Market combines a comparison shopping engine, an online marketplace and this deal should strengthen Yandex Market’s cross border ecommerce exposure. Created in 2000 by Russian internet giant Yandex, Yandex.Market currenty receives more than 22 million visits per month and over 16300 retailers worldwide list their products on the site.
China accounts for about 90% of cross border shipments to Russia and accounts for half of Russia’s cross border ecommerce turnover. In 2018 online imports increased by 29% compared to 2017 to RUB 348bn ($5.4bn).
“Yandex.Market, an ecommerce venture between Yandex and Sberbank, is developing three key lines of business – a traditional comparison shopping engine, online marketplace Beru where shoppers can make purchases from multiple categories on one platform and Bringley, a cross-border e-commerce platform.”
– BCS Global Markets, research note
Cross border trade to Russia is dominated by Alibaba’s AliExpress platform – JD’s biggest competitor in China. AliExpress Russia is is likely to become a joint venture between Alibaba Group, Mail.ru Group, MegaFon and the Russian Direct Investment Fund in the near future forming a major ecommerce group to compete with Yandex and Sberbank.
Interfax reported that Yandex Market will be selling JD.com goods in Russia through Yandex Market starting this June citing Yandex Market’s Head of International Development Alex Vasilyev.
