You're reading: Online retailer Rozetka seen as the top player in Ukrainian e-commerce

When Vladyslav Chechotkin and his wife Iryna were launching Rozetka in 2004, he says nobody believed he would be able to build successful store online. But Rozetka is today the country’s biggest online retailer, boasting more than 1.5 million visits per day.

“We appeared out of nothing, and we owe our existence to new technologies,” Chechotkin said at the Google Ukraine conference held in Kyiv on Nov. 11.

Chechotkin championed the flexibility given to businesses by the Internet.

“You can work wherever and whenever you want,” he said. “And as effectively as you want. A single online store gets 10 times more visitors than monsters like (the Kyiv-based shopping mall) Ocean Plaza. Just think of the investments that had to be made in that building, (compared to) our business structure.”

Man checking the smartfone in Rozetka’s showroom on July 15 in Kyiv. (Anastasia Vlasova)

At first, Rozetka sold mostly consumer electronics. However, step-by-step, the list of goods offered for sale has been augmented with toys, clothes, sports goods, beauty care products, musical instruments and even pets supplies. Last year Rozetka started selling train and plane tickets. The website has 145,000 items available for purchase.

And for the third year in a row, Rozetka has won first place in the e-commerce ranking of the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine.

The total volume of Ukraine’s e-commerce market last year was $1.6 billion, according to the report. Rozetka’s revenue was $295 million in 2014.

Even though in dollar terms the market fell by 20 percent, Rozetka ended up far ahead of its competitors. In comparison, the revenue of online store Allo, which took second place in Forbes’ rating, was just $68 million.

Last fall Forbes also included Rozetka on its list of the 200 biggest Ukrainian companies that make up the bulk of the state’s economy. Rozetka was the only online business among five other retail companies, however.

Watcher, an online publication focused on Internet businesses and social media, in 2011 published a top 10 list of people who influence Ukraine’s internet. Chechotkin was in second place.

“Everyone keeps asking what the secret behind our success is. Why did Rozetka succeed, and others didn’t? Sincerely, I can’t answer that question,” Chechotkin said. “If we hadn’t succeeded, I could have said it was because the taxes were high, the country was corrupt, and the competitors were mean. But we did (succeed), thank God.”

And with that success comes investment: Last summer the Ukraine-based private equity fund manager Horizon Capital announced it was putting money into Rozetka.

Although neither side has revealed the value of the deal, industry experts said it could be one of the biggest ever deals in Ukrainian e-commerce. Experts said the deal was good news not only for Rozetka, but also for the entire economy, as it meant that Ukraine remained attractive to big investors despite being under attack by Russia in the Donbas.

Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected].