Last week, just days after Elementaree.ru secured a $5 million round of funding, Mail.ru Group and Sberbank announced plans to acquire another Russian food delivery startup called Samokat.
The tech group and the financial giant – which are both listed on Western exchanges – are committed to acquire 75.6% of the service, according to corporate statements cited by Kommersant.
Thus, Samokat will become a part of their “O2O” ride-sharing and food delivery JV launched last year. The remaining shares (24.4%) will be retained by Samokat’s founders and managers.
“We believe in the business model and team of Samokat, which is already the leading dark store company in Russia,” said Sberbank’s First VP Lev Khasis, refering to the market of retail distribution centers or outlets catering exclusively to online shopping.
“In the current difficult situation which was triggered by the coronavirus epidemic, this company has an important social role to play, providing grocery products to people under quarantine. O2O’s investment will allow Samokat to concentrate all forces on this mission,” Russia Inc. quoted him as saying.
The anti-monopoly authorities are expected to give the green light to the transaction, allowing the parties to close it in the course of this quarter.
This will be an exit for PIK Group, a major residential property developer which invested an undisclosed amount in Samokat less than a year ago.
Samokat, which operates in Moscow and St. Petersburg, claims to deliver grocery orders “within 15 minutes.” There are thousands of SKUs in the company’s assortment, which meets the common range of products available in brick-and-mortar vicinity stores.
Samokat says it processes some 600,000 orders every month, with couriers delivering them by foot, bikes and scooters. (‘Samokat’ means ‘scooter’ in Russian.)
Hot meals, hot market
The Russian food delivery market was booming even before the coronavirus crisis hit the country earlier this month, triggering a dramatic increase of online retail activity in this field.
This market grew by more than 40% in 2018 and continued growing fast last year, according to DataInsight. Meanwhile, a series of important moves took place.
Food delivery startup iGooods attracted nearly $5 million from Joom, a Russian-founded international marketplace. PIK Group, a leading residential property developer, invested in a St. Petersburg-based e-grocery service.
Russia’s largest tech companies are also active. Last summer Mail.ru Group and Sberbank joined forces to develop ride-hailing and food delivery activities.
In late 2019 the bank – now a tentacular tech conglomerate – launched its own delivery service, ‘SberMarket.’ Focusing on grocery products and essential items, the service is available in dozens of Russian cities.
Yandex has its own food delivery service, called Yandex.Eda (Yandex.Eats), following the acquisition of the startup Foodfox in 2017. More recently, the company launched a new service called Lavka, spreading small warehouses across the capital. These are stocked with about 2,000 items and uses bike couriers to deliver orders in just 15 minutes, as reported by Bloomberg.
Meanwhile Perekrestok.ru, the online branch of a leading food retail network, grew at an impressive pace: in 2019, the company processed some 1.4 million orders, a threefold increase from 2018, as reported by its owner X5 Retail Group.
However, neither a booming demand nor generous funding are enough to ensure startup success. In late 2019 and early 2020, no fewer than three delivery startups shut down, as noted by East-West Digital News.
