Express grocery delivery is the buzzword in European retail at the moment, and few operators have set the bar as high as Russia's Yandex.Lavka, which promises deliveries within 10 to 15 minutes. This article first appeared in ESM July/August 2021.
As the old Andy Warhol quote goes, “In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes.” What the late pop artist might not have also realised is that the same time period could soon be sufficient to place, and receive, a basket of goods from your local supermarket – at least if Russian start-up Yandex.Lavka has anything to say about it.
Yandex.Lavka is the grocery arm of Russian Internet giant Yandex, offering a range of 2,500 items delivered within ten to 15 minutes to customers in major cities across the country. Operating via a network of locations dotted across a particular city, the platform was founded in the summer of 2019, but it has already established itself as a leading e-grocery player, with sales of RUB 24 billion (€270 million) in 2020, 370% higher than the previous year.
