Russia’s NASDAQ-listed tech giant Yandex plans to launch its express e-grocery delivery service in Europe in the second quarter, according to an announcement on Thursday.
The service, which delivers approximately 2,500 types of goods from local warehouses within 10-15 minutes of receiving an order, is set to begin operating in Paris under the Yango Deli brand. Yandex has already registered a French company and began hiring staff for this venture.
Yandex currently operates express grocery delivery in the Russian cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan under the Yandex.Lavka brand and in Israel’s greater Tel Aviv area, where its Yango Deli service is the country’s only provider of express e-grocery delivery services.
Yandex is one of the leading players in the Russian e-grocery market and one of the largest rapid grocery delivery providers in the world. It operates a network of more than 300 local warehouses, also known as darkstores.
Russia’s online grocery delivery market surged 3.6 times to EUR 1.71 billion in 2020 and is set to reach as much as EUR 3.31 billion by the end of 2021, according to Infoline research.
In France, Yandex’s Yango Deli will use the company’s model of hyperlocal delivery in 10-15 minutes from darkstores, supported by its proprietary technologies and know-how. It will take orders via its own app.
In addition to rapid grocery delivery, the Yandex ecosystem comprises over 90 mobile apps, services and products, including an autonomous delivery robot, AI-based voice assistant, restaurant delivery, online marketplace, car sharing, music streaming, ride-hailing, classifieds, personalized news and many others. It is often compared to Google, but it’s more like Amazon, Uber, Google, Deliveroo and Spotify all rolled into one.
The online grocery sector boomed worldwide in 2020, with its share of total e-commerce sales expanding rapidly in countries ranging from the United States to India. In Russia, a less saturated market, e-grocery is expected to reach $8 billion by 2023.