Yandex’s strategy to develop its marketplace, Yandex Market, saw new developments in the past few weeks. The company acquired PriceLabs, the developer of a price monitoring and optimization solution, and abruptly ended cooperation with MultiShip, an aggregator of delivery service offers in which Yandex had invested earlier this year.
The Russian search giant did not disclose the terms of its transaction with PriceLabs, but it has annouced that the startup will continue to develop its service under the Yandex brand.
PriceLabs allows merchants to monitor the offerings that are displayed on the marketplace and to optimize the price of their own offerings. The solution takes into account a range of factors, from competitors’ prices to internal criteria. The service will be offered free of charge to Yandex Market’s merchants.
A divorce from MultiShip
Meanwhile, Yandex has stopped cooperation with MultiShip, a startup that developed a solution to compare, combine and manage offers from different shipment service providers.
In January 2014, Yandex invested $1 million in the startup and acquired its technology – a software solution that allows merchants to parameterize delivery terms, display them in a customized way, and automate processes and cash flows with delivery providers.
The Yandex-MultiShip partnership looked like a perfect match between an established marketplace and an innovating startup. However, two weeks ago, the two companies announced they were putting an end to their partnership due to diverging views on business and strategy. Yandex will continue using the MultiShip technology and developing aggregation services under its own brand. MultiShip’s engineering team will keep working at Yandex, while the startup itself will cease its activities on the e-commerce shipment service market.
Yandex did not answer EWDN’s request for comments.
Reinforcing leadership
Yandex Market collaborates with 16,000 merchants from Russia and abroad. For many product categories, there are detailed product cards and a special service to help shoppers select products. The marketplace offers a range of features, including price comparison, consumer ratings and reviews, and a mobile application with a bar code reader, as described in East-West Digital News’ research study on Russian e-commerce.
Since last year, Yandex has undertaken several steps to penetrate the market even deeper, from payment, to delivery, to its relationship with both merchants and users.
Purchases can now be completed either on the merchant’s site or directly on the marketplace. The platform’s business model includes both CPC and – since late 2013 – CPO agreements with the merchants.
Yandex Market is by far the largest marketplace in Russia with an up to 90% market share and up to 20 million monthly users. Product offers from the marketplace are translated into the Yandex search engine for relevant search queries, which contributes to high traffic.
The platform’s leadership could be challenged by eBay, which is currently opening its international service to domestic offers.
- EWDN has published an in-depth research on the Russian online retail industry based on exchanges with more than 100 market players and experts. To receive free insights, please contact us at [email protected].
