Category: People
After six years with BCG in Russia, Europe and India, Maëlle Gavet joined Ozon.ru in early 2010 as Marketing and CRM Director. She was appointed CEO in 2011, a year that came as a tipping point for this major online retailer, with a $100 million round of financing in September and, by the year’s end, preparation for the acquisition of leading footwear retailer Sapato.ru.
Two years after the Groupon fever hit Russia in March 2010, Leonid Gluzman, the founder of daily deal site aggregator Zina.ru, recalls the history of this thriving industry and shares its key figures and trends for the future.
This interview is an excerpt from an in-depth research paper on Russian e-commerce that will be released next month.
Launched in 2009 as a hotel booking engine for travel agents in Russia and Ukraine, Travelmenu.ru has grown into a major online retailer of package tours, a segment that represents more than 85% of the total outbound travel market in Russia. The site has served more than 250,000 travelers to date. Travelmenu has just announced it raised an additional $1 million from its existing investors Almaz Capital and Runa Capital, bringing the company’s total financing to $4.6 million.
Katrin Buckenmaier, who has just been promoted to CEO of Travelmenu, shared her vision of the fast-growing Russian online travel market with East-West Digital News, along with her experience of the challenges faced by a foreigner managing a startup in Russia.
Among US business angels, Esther Dyson is probably the one who has invested the most to date in Russia. Her portfolio includes no fewer than 15 Russian startups as well as Yandex, the search giant which she advises as a member of its board of directors.
In this exchange with East-West Digital News, Esther Dyson speaks openly about her business successes and failures. She also reveals why she considers Russia her “second country,” and why she thinks that information technologies could bring a better future to Russia by “reducing the cost of being honest.”
After launches in a range of European, Latin American and Asian countries, Airbnb.com, the famous US online alternative accommodation service, is coming to Russia. The embryonic Airbnb Russian team is headed by Eugen Miropolski, who formerly held senior executive positions at Fast Lane Ventures, KupiVip.ru, and Groupon Russia.
In an interview with East-West Digital News while visiting Moscow, Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk shared his vision of the Russian market and offered insights of Airbnb’s development plans in Russia and beyond.
A new player on the Russian venture scene, iTech Capital has attracted capital from a variety of prominent Russian IT businessmen. Its first investments, in late 2011, went to play marketing site The Battle Of Brands and to Giftofoni, an innovative social gifting app launched on the Turkish-language segment of Facebook. In this exchange with East-West Digital News, iTech Capital managing partner Gleb Davidyuk presents the fund’s investment strategy and comments on Russia’s place on the global IT map.
Almost two years after the release of its Russian language version, and one year after it launched a local classifieds service, eBay enjoys a strong and still growing popularity among Russian consumers who use the platform to order goods from all over the globe.
eBay’s Head of International Expansion for Europe Rob Cassedy shared some insights with East-West Digital News, including some key traffic and trade indicators as well as eBay’s goals for the local market.
Pavel Vrublevsky was released last week after spending 6 months in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, following his arrest in June of 2011 for organizing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the website of Assist, a competitor of his company, Chronopay.
A leading Russian online payment processing company, Chronopay processes almost half of all Visa and MasterCard online transactions in Russia and partners with such companies as Britain’s MoneyBookers, Spain’s Caixa Catalunya, the Deutsche Bank subsidiary Pago, and China’s Alipay.
In a confidential email sent in October to his management team revealed yesterday by TechCrunch, Oliver Samwer, the co-founder of German incubator Rocket Internet, had crude words for the management of Lamoda.ru, the online shoe retailer he launched in Russia earlier this year.
“Our team fucked up in Russia,” wrote Samwer, complaining that Lamoda.ru failed to become number one in the country – a reference to Lamoda’s competition with Sapato.ru, launched in 2010, which remains the most recognized brand in this market segment in spite of Lamoda’s repeated marketing assaults.
Former Mail.ru Group Executive Vice President Global Operations François Esculier has gained a seat on the Board of Directors of luxury private shopping club CollectionPrivee.ru. He recently shared with East-West Digital News his vision of the global integration of the Russian Internet, speaking his mind on the management issues domestic players faced as well as about online strategies for international brands in Russia.
Российским
iTech Capital’s Gleb Davidyuk: “The Russian startup scene has been largely spared corruption.”
Jon Bradford of TexDrive on Russian startups: “One of the main challenges is cultural”
Vrublevsky freed after 6 months in jail