As long as the cold war is fought with virtual shops, we can rest assured.
A similar thing had already happened in 2013, when the entrepreneur Pavel Durov had launched Telegram, today the social enemy number one of WhatsApp, the app included in the Meta group.
It was then the turn of Ozon, an e-commerce platform founded in Russia in 1998, but which has only in recent years conquered large slices of the market. And which now really proposes itself as the antagonist of Jeff Bezos’ creature, Amazon, starting from curious similarities between the two names.
Then the news is very recent in 2022 Ozon will also land in Italy.
Let’s find out more about the platform that everyone now calls the Russian Amazon. Let’s see the numbers that Ozon has done in recent years and everything there is to know about the company’s next arrival in our country.
What is Ozon
Ozon, founded in 1998 by Alexander Egorov, is the second largest multi-category e-commerce platform in Russia by number of sales. And its CEO Alexander Shulgin announced that in 2022 Ozon will arrive in our country.
In recent years the platform boasts numbers in constant and exponential growth.
Ozon’s numbers
Online sales, which in 2019 exceeded one billion dollars, grew by 93% compared to the previous year.
The number of users who shop on Ozon has also increased dramatically, with an average annual growth of around 40%.
On the platform there are more than 6 million products divided into 24 categories, offered by over 13,000 sellers. Ozon receives around 30 million orders per year. It ships more than 100,000 packages every day to around 6,500 cities in Russia.
In 2020, Ozon made a record IPO (Initial Public Offering) in New York, for nearly a billion dollars. It is the largest in Russia since 2017.
The prospects
With these numbers, the company can only foresee an expanding near future. As Alexander Shulgin explained: “The company is expanding very fast, for this year we expect a growth figure of 120%. And at this rate, we expect growth to continue beyond that. Russia’s retail market is quite large, around $ 500 billion, and e-commerce penetration is around 10%. It grows every year and is expected to reach 15-16% in 4 years from now. The market is growing fast and we are growing faster than him “.
Ozon arrives in Italy
The move for which Ozon will arrive in Italy in the course of 2022 is part of this perspective.
Shulgin always explains: “In 2022 we want to build contacts to allow companies from other countries, such as Italy, to sell to Russian citizens through Ozon. We already have companies from China, Turkey, Israel, the US and Korea using this service. We did not do what we should have done in Italy, but now we will solve it.
Then, speaking of Italy as a key destination, the CEO adds: “There are 85 million people who visit our app and our website every month. They are people who spend in Russia with Ozon and we have 21 million customers who have made at least one purchase in the last year. It is a huge audience, and obviously there are many people interested in buying Italian brands. This is why we plan to launch our operations in Italy next year ”.
In the end, Alexander Shulgin gives an indication of the timing of the operation. “We hope that by the middle of next year it will be possible to do so”Ozon’s chief executive said.
The boom in e-commerce in the first months of the pandemic
Shulgin also talked about the relationship between the e-commerce boom and the 2020 lockdown. “In 2020 there was obviously an acceleration of e-commerce, particularly during the lockdown. But the growth remains, the virus has only accelerated it: we want to communicate our possibilities to companies in other countries, who can use Ozon to grow their business and sell in Russia, and find partners who can make our landing easier. in other States “.
Ozon vs Amazon
In a few months we will therefore understand how much Ozon will be able to erode the excessive power of Amazon also in our country.
In recent weeks the company, which in July passed from the leadership of Jeff Bezos to that of Andy Jassy, has communicated some data concerning Italy. And which show how its roots in our territory have grown: in fact 2.9 billion euros were invested in 2020, compared to 1.8 billion in 2019.
And in 2021, Amazon created 3,000 new permanent jobs, bringing the total to over 12,500. In the decade 2011-2020, according to a study, Amazon is even the company that has created the most jobs in Italy.