Techcranch 2011 - crowded, politicized, ironic
Today was the second TechCrunch Moscow conference. It's no secret that this event has been awaited since last year, from the moment that last year Techcranch ended. Why did it happen? The surest reason is the level of this conference. The completely natural, familiar and ordinary level of European and American conferences stands out very much from the background of domestic events. This affects everything - organization, level of speakers, choice of topics, audience. Unfortunately, so far we have few such events. The only thing that overshadowed today's visit is the incomprehensible PR of the Islet project. Otherwise, everything was “on the level”.
This year’s program did not contain unexpected surprises, but rather resembled last year’s - the same interviews of the same people, the same battles of startups and speeches of venture investors. However, a lot has changed over the year, and in general it was interesting to listen and compare the performances of Volozh and Grishin now and a year ago. Armed with not a pen, but a macbook, a TNW correspondent visited the E-Commerce section. In my opinion, she was the most informative and exciting among others at the current TechCrunch. Section speakers were Lauren Le Moal (PayPal), Rob Cassidy (Ebay), Mael Gave (Ozon) and Ruslan Fazlyev (Ecwid).
From the first minutes, the Russian e-commerce market was diagnosed - it is one of the fastest growing in the world. At the same time, during the section, it was impossible not to notice the smashing arrows in the direction of our e-commerce market and still the recognition of its denseness.
Mael Gave (Ozon) spoke about the delights of her own delivery service (passing greetings to the Russian Post along the way) and stated that there was no demand for PayPal among shoppers. According to Gave, it is unprofitable for a company to invest in marketing a credit card payment method, since 80% of purchases are paid in cash. There was an impromptu scene - representatives of Ozone and PayPal bargained for the percent of the latter from transactions (the largest Russian online store giggled and insisted on 1%).
Lauren Le Moal spoke about plans for the large-scale arrival of PayPal to Russia, not only for transfers abroad and back, but primarily for the domestic market. In his opinion, the current dominant in Russia payment for goods in cash hinders the development of electronic commerce, and in the future, even if it will be preserved, but to a lesser extent.
Ruslan Fazlyev of Ecwid made his vision of the problems and opportunities, pointing out primarily the lack of e-commerce market infrastructure. Other obstacles are the Russian Post, which everyone is swearing at (loss, theft of parcels), the need for a normal legislative system. For Western models to work successfully with us, they need to understand our way of life (although, as we all know, “Russia cannot be understood with our minds”).
The “Ibeyevsky” envoy Rob Cassidy, following PayPal, proclaimed the Russian market one of the most important in the company’s strategy (the guys are actively developing localization) and identified the development trend of Ebay as a “social business” - they experiment with social networks, have opened several discount coupon services, made group possible buying tickets on the site, they conduct many tests in the social segment, and as a conclusion: there is a demand for this direction, but they have not yet found a universal solution.
The speakers alternately answered a question from the audience about the rapidly growing turnover in the field of mobile sales. For Ozon, this is an important trend, but from a financial point of view, there is no confirmation for it; obstacles - the high price of devices for an ordinary Russian citizen, the unreliability and high cost of mobile Internet. In short, the mobile revolution has not yet begun.
Ebay is getting more and more interesting globally - about $ 5 billion is spinning in this segment, and it really is one of the main priorities. But this rainbow message does not apply to mobile commerce in Russia - here transaction costs are still too high.
Lauren Le Moal from PayPal predicted that sooner or later everything will change, first a meaningful number of devices should appear in Russia (iPhones, androids, etc.), then people will master browsers and start making payments through their mobile phones (it should be as easy as possible), and here there will be problems with delivery, they must be solved. Pioneers in this field, we need not only to write applications for mobile devices, but to understand how fresh and trendy html5 will affect user interaction.
This year Twitter broadcast was especially successful. I cannot but give some of the most striking phrases of this day. Else - look for the hashtag - #tcmoscow . Thanks for the photo to Andrei Yablonsky .
This year’s program did not contain unexpected surprises, but rather resembled last year’s - the same interviews of the same people, the same battles of startups and speeches of venture investors. However, a lot has changed over the year, and in general it was interesting to listen and compare the performances of Volozh and Grishin now and a year ago. Armed with not a pen, but a macbook, a TNW correspondent visited the E-Commerce section. In my opinion, she was the most informative and exciting among others at the current TechCrunch. Section speakers were Lauren Le Moal (PayPal), Rob Cassidy (Ebay), Mael Gave (Ozon) and Ruslan Fazlyev (Ecwid).
From the first minutes, the Russian e-commerce market was diagnosed - it is one of the fastest growing in the world. At the same time, during the section, it was impossible not to notice the smashing arrows in the direction of our e-commerce market and still the recognition of its denseness.
Mael Gave (Ozon) spoke about the delights of her own delivery service (passing greetings to the Russian Post along the way) and stated that there was no demand for PayPal among shoppers. According to Gave, it is unprofitable for a company to invest in marketing a credit card payment method, since 80% of purchases are paid in cash. There was an impromptu scene - representatives of Ozone and PayPal bargained for the percent of the latter from transactions (the largest Russian online store giggled and insisted on 1%).
Lauren Le Moal spoke about plans for the large-scale arrival of PayPal to Russia, not only for transfers abroad and back, but primarily for the domestic market. In his opinion, the current dominant in Russia payment for goods in cash hinders the development of electronic commerce, and in the future, even if it will be preserved, but to a lesser extent.
Ruslan Fazlyev of Ecwid made his vision of the problems and opportunities, pointing out primarily the lack of e-commerce market infrastructure. Other obstacles are the Russian Post, which everyone is swearing at (loss, theft of parcels), the need for a normal legislative system. For Western models to work successfully with us, they need to understand our way of life (although, as we all know, “Russia cannot be understood with our minds”).
The “Ibeyevsky” envoy Rob Cassidy, following PayPal, proclaimed the Russian market one of the most important in the company’s strategy (the guys are actively developing localization) and identified the development trend of Ebay as a “social business” - they experiment with social networks, have opened several discount coupon services, made group possible buying tickets on the site, they conduct many tests in the social segment, and as a conclusion: there is a demand for this direction, but they have not yet found a universal solution.
The speakers alternately answered a question from the audience about the rapidly growing turnover in the field of mobile sales. For Ozon, this is an important trend, but from a financial point of view, there is no confirmation for it; obstacles - the high price of devices for an ordinary Russian citizen, the unreliability and high cost of mobile Internet. In short, the mobile revolution has not yet begun.
Ebay is getting more and more interesting globally - about $ 5 billion is spinning in this segment, and it really is one of the main priorities. But this rainbow message does not apply to mobile commerce in Russia - here transaction costs are still too high.
Lauren Le Moal from PayPal predicted that sooner or later everything will change, first a meaningful number of devices should appear in Russia (iPhones, androids, etc.), then people will master browsers and start making payments through their mobile phones (it should be as easy as possible), and here there will be problems with delivery, they must be solved. Pioneers in this field, we need not only to write applications for mobile devices, but to understand how fresh and trendy html5 will affect user interaction.
This year Twitter broadcast was especially successful. I cannot but give some of the most striking phrases of this day. Else - look for the hashtag - #tcmoscow . Thanks for the photo to Andrei Yablonsky .