Russia’s Yandex Expands eGrocery To Paris And London

Yandex, the Russian internet giant, will roll out its online grocery delivery in Paris in the second quarter of the year and London in the third quarter, U.S. News reported.

Russian eCommerce was doing well last year, with lockdown measures keeping shoppers at home. Yandex has seen strong demand in Russia amid the pandemic, according to U.S. News.

One of the main beneficiaries was Yandex.Lavka, a delivery service promising 15-minute deliveries, U.S. News reported.

The service rolled out in Moscow in January, PYMNTS reported. Yandex.Lavka stocks around 2,000 items and has plans to operate as a digital convenience market for items like toothpaste and condoms. Demand for the service is anticipated to grow to around fivefold by 2023.

“We saw that retailers themselves are too slow to deliver, while delivery startups that work with third-party stores don’t have real-time access to their assortment and often have to replace goods in the order,” Maxim Firsov, head of the division that includes Yandex.Lavka, said at the time. “Therefore, we focused on developing our own mini-warehouses with super-fast delivery.”

Yandex.Lavka currently processes almost 2 million orders per month and has over 300 dark stores in operation, according to the U.S. News. Dark stores are dedicated warehouses working only with online clients, which allows for faster delivery and less expensive rental costs.

Yango, the international arm of Yandex Go, which is the firm’s taxi aggregator and food tech business, launched the grocery service in Israel under the brand of Yango Deli in 2020 U.S. News reported.

The Yango Deli service will soon operate in Paris, U.S. News reported. Yandex has already registered a French company and plans to begin hiring staff for the venture. It will roll out in London later in the year.

Yandex also operates Russia’s largest ride-hailing service and its core advertising business. The company plans to spend around $500 million to develop its eCommerce business this year, according to the company financial chief from February this year, per U.S. News.

Yandex launched 20 years ago as a search engine in the mode of Google, according to the PYMNTS report.