Introverted, daring, and very rich: Meet Tatyana Bakalchuk, half of Russia’s woman-billionaire population

In the spring of 2004, school teacher Tatyana Bakalchuk and her husband Vyacheslav, a radiophysicist, realized they weren’t earning enough money to provide for their infant son. So they decided to launch an online clothing store. Fond of brightly colored clothes, Bakalchuk named her business “Wildberries.” She was the company’s first customer, and she used public transit to bring the shipment home to her apartment, which simultaneously became her warehouse.

The online store’s revenues reached some 120 billion rubles (approximately $1.8 billion) in 2018. Forbes Russia estimates the company is worth $1.2 billion, making it the fourth most valuable Internet company in Russia after Yandex, Mail.ru Group, and Avito. Bakalchuk is now a billionaire, putting her in a club that has only 105 members in Russia. She is one of only two women in the country to amass so much wealth.