Wikimart, a major Russian B2C marketplace, has agreed a capital increase with a group of Russian investors, including Finprombank chairman Anatoly Goncharov. The news was revealed last week by business daily Kommersant and confirmed to East-West Digital News by Wikimart’s press service.
The $40 million capital injection will be used in part to acquire Terminal.ru, a multichannel retail group that comprises a network of 25 outlets in 13 Russian cities as well as e-commerce sites Terminal.ru and Mallstreet.ru.
“We see the potential for significant savings by combining the online channel of Wikimart with the retail network and storage infrastructure of Terminal.ru,” Kommersant quoted Wikimart co-founder Kamil Kurmakaev as saying.
Kurmakaev cited the example of Ulmart, another multichannel retailer which became last year Russia’s top e-commerce player by sales revenues.
No more Western money for Russian e-commerce?
Launched in 2008 by Stanford graduates Maxim Faldin and Kamil Kurmakaev, Wikimart had the initial ambition of creating a Russian analog of eBay. Heavily funded by major US investment funds, the startup has now become a major marketplace offering its own products alongside nearly 2 million items from 1,500 third-party merchants.
Wikimart initially intended to raise new funds from western investors, who it claimed are “still in the game for Russian e-commerce.” However, not only did the Russian company fail to attract new international investors, but Tiger Global Management, its existing shareholder with an approximate 50% stake in the company according to Kommersant, did not even participate in the latest round.
Ozon’s last round of financing this past spring – no less than $150 million – involved also exclusively Russian investors, while several international funds had previously backed the company.
The near future will tell to which extent, in the current political context, international investors have become reluctant to invest in Russian e-commerce – which many considered not so long ago as one of the most attractive investment fields on the global high-tech map.
According to a research study by East-West Digital News, the Russian online retail market amounted to more than $16 billion last year, up nearly 30% from 2012. This figure does not include the cross-border segment, which reached an estimated $3 billion, almost doubling every year.
