AliExpress Russia, a leading cross-border and domestic e-commerce platform in Russia, has invested in a major regional e-commerce company, KazanExpress, acquiring a 30% stake. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed but, in an exchange with Kommersant, KazanExpress co-owner Linar Khusnullin refered to an amount of “several billions of rubles” (dozens of millions of US dollars).
Founded in 2017 and based in Tatarstan, KazanExpress combines marketplace and retail models — working with some 5,000 registered Russian merchants (as of early March), essentially from Russia’s regions. The company is currently investing in logistics to expand its 24-hour delivery. It aims to reach to 72% of the country’s online consumers by covering 127 cities in the European part of Russia.
“Perfectly built logistics is our key feature, with free, next-day delivery in covered city,” Khusnullin told Kommersant, noting that consumers are not only sensitive to price and assortment.
In February 2021, KazanExpress generated just 2 million visits, according to SimilarWeb — a model record in comparison with Wildberries (155 million), AliExpress Russia (93 million) or Ozon (79 million). However, the company is growing extremely fast: its traffic doubled from September 2020 and the number of parcels (currently 1 million monthly), increased eight-fold in a year.
Thus, KazanExpress expects an eight-fold increase of its turnover this year (from 1.3 billion rubles in 2020, or $180,000 at the average exchange rate of the year).
”As a leading Russian e-commerce player, we develop the company in different directions and always look at bright startup,” commented AliExpress Russia CEO Dmitry Sergeev.
Update Oct. 25, 2021: AliExpress Russia took control of KazanExpress, bringing its stake to 50.1%
