Why hasn’t Russia produced yet an e-commerce giant like Amazon

In most countries, e-commerce is dominated by one or two behemoths, such as Amazon in the U.S. and Britain, Alibaba in China, and MercadoLibre in Brazil. In Russia, where the largest web store has less than 7% of the market, at least a half-dozen companies are in the running to become the king of online shopping.

That’s set to change as the country’s e-tailers gear up to spend more than $1 billion on their websites, warehouses, and delivery services. Those investments, starting next year, will help boost e-commerce in Russia to $52 billion by 2023, from $19 billion in 2018, Morgan Stanley forecasts, spurring a wave of consolidation likely to leave just a handful of major players.