Moscow — In Moscow, online orders delivered in just 15 minutes by bicycle is what the future of shopping may hold.
Founded two decades ago as a search engine such as Alphabet’s Google, Yandex has since upended the local taxi market and launched a variety of other digital services, including restaurant deliveries, as it surpassed 127-billion roubles in sales. The latest push comes as Russia’s once-slow embrace of e-commerce accelerates. While many companies offer delivery of online grocery orders, consistently doing it this quickly breaks new ground.
There are loads of services where orders are picked from the shelves of stores, but on-demand grocery delivery is a new retail model. Getir, backed by Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh, uses it in Turkey, while GoPuff is developing a similar business in the US Amazon.com has Prime Now, which offers two-hour delivery. Other companies, such as US-based Instacart, say they can get goods to customers in half that time.
Andrey Ivchenko, a 32-year-old tourism manager, started using Yandex. Lavka in October and places orders two or three times a week for basics such as water and things he and his girlfriend can cook for dinner. His deliveries take seven to 12 minutes.