AliExpress Russia has announced record results for its Global Shopping Day, also known as Singles’ Day, on Nov. 11 and 12. The sales event attracted 5 million Russian consumers, RBC reported, citing company statements.
These online shopping aficionados made more than 30 million purchases amounting to some 17.2 billion rubles ($270 million at the current exchange rate).
Created by Alibaba Group in 2009, this sales event took place in Russia for the first time in 2015. Through two marketplaces operating in Russia, Aliexpress and Tmall, the company sells mainly goods from China — but around one in six of the purchases made by Russians on the AliExpress platform on Singles’ Day were with companies and sellers based in Russia.
The number of items sold by Russian companies increased 17 times from the previous year. These were, in particular, children’s goods, clothing and items for the home.
In total sales in Russian involved more than 150,000 sellers from across the world.
Russo-Chinese JV for e-commerce leadership
AliExpress Russia is a joint venture of Alibaba Group, Mail.Ru Group, Russian telco MegaFon and sovereign fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). This partnership was finalized in October 2019.
The JV aims to combine Alibaba’s e-commerce assets with Mail.Ru Group’s leadership in the fields of social media (VK and OK), online gaming and online communications. MegaFon, on its side, is bringing a customer base of 77 million people.
Alibaba Group has received 55.7% of the economic rights while Mail.Ru Group and MageFon got 15% and 24.3%, respectively. However, the Russian shareholders have the majority of voting rights (50.1%) and may increase their weight to 52.4%.
Other contenders for e-commerce leadership in Russia are, notably, Wildberries, the current market leader; Ozon, which considers a Western IPO; and the Yandex Market group of companies, a joint-venture of Sberbank and Yandex.
Russian e-commerce is entering a promising development cycle. Last year this market reached around $23 billion last year (taking into account only orders of physical goods), including some $5 billion for cross-border sales. These numbers are relatively modest in comparison with advanced Western and Asian markets, but Russian e-commerce is catching up with a growth rate of around 20% annually, according to a recent study by East-West Digital News.
