Russia's e-commerce business was worth 2.7 trillion rubles last year, with half of sales coming from platforms

Russian data research organization Data Insight recently released a report on Russian e-commerce transactions in 2020. The report shows that the size of Russia's e-commerce market last year was 2.7 trillion rubles, and a total of 830 million orders were completed.

According to the report, nearly half of sales come from e-commerce platforms. The number of orders through Wildberries, Ozon, AliExpress Russia and Yandex.Market increased by 78% in one year to 405 million; total turnover increased by 108% to 721 billion rubles, with an average order value of 1,780 rubles.

Other online markets (including large shopping malls, food and medicine sales) grew by 38% to 1.7 trillion rubles. The number of orders reached 278 million, with an average order value of 6,205 rubles.

The sales of food sold through the Internet amounted to 130 billion rubles, and the sales of medicines amounted to 131 billion rubles (excluding the sales channels of the above four platforms). These two market segments each accounted for 5% of the total turnover of Internet transactions.

Internet transactions have grown their share of the overall sales mix, accounting for 9% of the total retail market in 2020, compared to 6% in 2019. Non-food product sales via the internet accounted for 21% of the market share – taking 7% away from offline channels.

Online transactions between users

In addition, Data Insight and Avito together calculated the size of the Russian C2C market. In the past year and a half, sales of new and second-hand goods by individuals have increased by 87%, reaching 1.06 trillion rubles by the end of 2020. The number of buyers still exceeds that of sellers, but the gap has narrowed from 13.2 million to 13.3 million.

There are more male sellers than female sellers, and for the first time, the number of sellers in the 35-44 age group exceeds those aged 25-34. Researchers noted that in 2017, the proportion of sellers under 35 was 62%, while in 2020, the proportion of older people was almost the same.

More than half of sellers deliver goods only in their region. However, this share has decreased in 2020, and the share of sales outside the region has increased from 8% in 2017 to 19% in 2020. They deliver orders through shipping points as well as courier services and Russian Post.

Russian C2C sellers mainly sell used items, accounting for 62% of all goods. 32% sell new items, 8% resell, and 7% sell self-produced goods.

Most individual sellers post ads for electronics and home appliances (34%), clothing and footwear (30%), and children’s products (25%).

Russia