Interest in the fast-growing Russian digital content market received further confirmation this past Friday with the announcement of a $6.5 million investment by Umart, Russia’s number one online retailer, in Dream Industries, a Moscow-based developer of digital content platforms. The move came just one week after e-commerce pioneer Ozon acquired a stake in Russia’s e-book …
On May 16, amendments to the Russian legislation on payments came into force with potentially far-reaching consequences for e-payment and e-commerce companies working with Russian customers – including those operating from abroad. The amendments, included in an “anti-terrorism” package adopted by the Russian parliament on May 5, make user identification mandatory for electronic payments in …
eBay has signed a deal with Russian online store Dostami.ru that will increase the American Internet auction giant’s deliveries from the U.S. to Russia and the former Soviet republics, Lenta.ru reported Tuesday, citing representatives from both companies. The agreement will allow eBay users in the CIS to buy from sellers who don’t deliver to the region, and also to receive goods purchased from different sellers in one package, Vladimir Dolgov, …
eBay partners with Dostami.ru to make deliveries from US to Russia easier Read More
Responsible for the international activities and business development of Russian delivery service company SPSR, 32-year-old Alex Vasiliev personifies Russia’s new generation of internationally-oriented retail and logistics professionals. Before joining SPSR in 2011, he served Turkish companies operating in Russia in the bank card and logistics industries. In this interview with East-West Digital News, Vasiliev describes SPSR’s thriving …
iHerb, the largest US online store for health and beauty, begins delivering to Russia through alternative shipment company Boxberry. iHerb is the U.S. market leader in the field of vitamins, supplements and beauty products. The site offers 35,000 products from more than 1,000 well-known brands. The Internet shop, which has a Russian version, is certified by NSF …
US health and beauty online store iHerb delivers via next-gen shipment provider Boxberry Read More
CrowdSystems, the developer of retail analytics tools based on crowdsourcing technology, announced Friday that it closed a $1 million Series A round of financing from Russian venture fund InVenture Partners at an undisclosed valuation. Similar to the international platform Quri.com, CrowdSystems provides retail companies and brands with crowdsourcing tools for retail audits and consumer research. Consumers …
Crowdsourced retail analytics startup raises $1 million from InVenture Partners Read More
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. In this interview with the …
Yesterday Ozon Holdings, one of Russia’s most established e-commerce players, announced that it acquired a stake in LitRes, the leader in Russia’s fast growing – though still embryonic – domestic e-book market. Neither the size of the stake nor the amount of the transaction has been disclosed. Ozon presented the deal as a way “to further …
Ozon acquires stake in LitRes, the leading Russian e-book store Read More
East-West Digital News is proud to announce Russia’s first internationally-oriented industry event, the e-Days E-Commerce Conference, which will be held on June 6 in Moscow in partnership with comScore, InternetRetailer.com and PwC as well as with western chambers of commerce, Russian industry associations and online marketing agency BuzzFactory joining as co-organizers. Virtually all the industry’s leading players – including …
Industry leaders to discuss Russian and global e-commerce trends at Moscow conference Read More
Recent political tensions and even a cold-war style warning from the FBI have not slowed the flow of Russian venture capital into US startups, nor have they stifled so far the American entrepreneurs’ appetite for these investments. In the past two months, no fewer than six publicly disclosed deals have been concluded between US based …
Far from politics, Russian money still fuels US startups Read More
The birth of the .ru extension in April, 1994 has come to symbolize the beginning of Russia’s domestic internet history. Now, twenty years later, East-West Digital News co-founder Andrew Zotov, a pioneer of the industry, recalls these earlier times. The early days The Internet appeared in Russia well before 1994, with the first local service …
Celebrating the .RU – A look back over two decades of the Russian Internet Read More
Ozon Holdings, one of the most established players on the Russian e-commerce scene, announced today a $150 million funding deal with AFK Sistema, a Russian LSE-listed holding operating in a range of industries, and its subsidiary MTS, a leading mobile operator and retailer. [See Sistema’s investor presentation of the deal.] The transaction marks the most significant investment volume …
Ozon receives giant funding from AFK Sistema and MTS Read More
