Bringly, the cross-border shopping site created as a joint venture between Russian internet giant Yandex and the country’s largest lender Sberbank, has stopped taking orders, the Yandex.Market said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Тwo weeks ago, Yandex proposed Kremlin-endorsed changes to its governance structure that would reduce the company’s involvement with Sberbank, whose “golden share” in Yandex will pass to a newly-created “public interest foundation”.
“On the (Bringly) site, you cannot make a new order. All orders that customers have already made will definitely reach the recipients,” a Yandex.Market spokeswoman told Reuters.
The company has decided to focus on developing its online market place Beru, she added, including adding the ability to buy goods in other countries.
Yandex and Sberbank signed a deal in 2018 to create a joint venture based on the Yandex.Market comparison shopping site and later that year launched local online market place Beru, which translates as ‘I’ll take it’, along with bringly.ru.
Bringly offered Russian shoppers about four million products from China, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom, but the site never went beyond the beta testing phase.
Sberbank agreed to buy a stake in internet company Mail.ru in October as Chief Executive German Gref transforms the lender into a banking-to-online services company.
