Russian Internet Giant Yandex Opens Shanghai Office, Helping Chinese Merchants Tap Russian Market
David Tsai, Head of Yandex Greater China, at Yandex Office
As the political relationship between China and Russia warms up, trading between the two powerhouses is taking a sweet turn.
China is now Russia’s largest trading partner, with their annual import-export volume hitting more than $88 billion USD in 2014. The booming cross-border trade sector has fostered huge business potentials for merchants from both of the countries, and internet giants are poised to capitalize this wave.
Confirming our earlier report, Russia’s internet conglomerate Yandex announced the official launch of its Shanghai office and a Chinese ad marketing platform, aiming to provide a one-stop service for Chinese companies who want to explore the Russian market. This is the first time Yandex has set up an official office in Asia.
“In 2014, more than $2 billion USD worth of China-Russia cross-border trade was processed online, accounting for nearly half of the total volume,”said Daivid Tsai, Manager of Yandex’s Greater China operations.
“More and more companies started to realize the importance of internet technology in helping them to gain access to potential customers. This change has in turn pushed the growth of online ad business and that’s the main reason why Yandex decided to bring our service closer to Chinese clients.”
In addition to search functions and a number of popular internet-related services, Yandex is also Russia’s dominate online ad platform, claiming to have a 96% coverage capability of Russia’s total 80 million internet users. Yandex has already helped several Chinese companies entering Russian market, including Chinese B2C e-commerce site Lightinthebox and biological technology company ZKTeco, Tsai noted.
The new Shanghai Office is primarily focused on offering three solutions for Chinese clients:
Yandex Direct: an automated, auction-based system for the placement of text-based advertising.
Yandex Market: a B2C platform that provides users with an easy to use system to select a product and a place to buy it, compare models and prices, find out more detailed information about a product, read reviews. More than 18,000 active online and “brick-and-mortar” retailers can be found on Yandex Market.
Yandex Money: Russia’s top online payment service, registering over 76,000 businesses users.
As Chinese companies, big and small, are trying to explore the global market, they are also creating a huge new market for advertising. Russian social networking site VKontakte also opened a marketing branch in Beijing last year. Facebook, Twitter and Google have run similar operations, delving into outbound marketing opportunities despite the fact their services are inaccessible in mainland China.
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Image credit: Yandex