Yandex.Market partners with JD.com

Russian online marketplace Yandex.Market and major Chinese online retailer JD.com have closed a strategic partnership deal. Since this month, Yandex.Market will sell JD.com’s goods in Russia through its ecommerce platform.

Yandex.Market is an ecommerce venture between Russian internet company Yandex and Sberbank, the biggest bank in Russia. It’s an online platform used by over 17 million people every month. Yandex.Market is a comparison shopping engine, an online marketplace and an cross-border ecommerce platform in one.

JD.com versus AliExpress

The deal with Chinese ecommerce giant JD.com should strengthen Yandex.Market’s cross-border ecommerce exposure. According to IntelliNews, another major Chinese company, AliExpress, is likely to become a joint venture between Alibaba, MegaFon, Mail.ru and Russian Direct Investment Fund in the near future. This joint venture, AliExpress Russia, will be a major ecommerce conglomeration that will compete with the new joint venture from Yandex and Sberbank.

China accounts for half of Russia’s cross-border ecommerce turnover

China is a very important partner to Russia, also when it comes to ecommerce. Currently, China accounts for about 90 percent of total cross-border shipments to Russia. It also accounts for about half of that country’s cross-border ecommerce turnover. Last year, Russia’s online imports increased by 29 percent to 4.75 billion euros.