Shyam Nambiar, Avito: Samara region is one of the most active regions on the map of Avito

– For what purpose did you come to Samara?

— The main goal is to understand what Samara is like. We at Avito want to find out the peculiarities of the local market – first of all, we are talking about personnel, real estate, logistics. Based on the information received, we will already make business decisions.

– What potential solutions are we talking about – maybe opening an office or a logistics point?

– Since we work throughout the country, then, of course, we cannot physically be present in all cities. But Avito wants to be closer to people. We determine the places where we can conduct our activities, we are looking for the best locations where we can open an office.

Now most of our employees are concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the Samara region, we already have people who work for us, but from home.

What is your area of ​​responsibility in the company?

— The customer service center that I head has 1,800 employees from 35 Russian cities. We solve the problems of both our buyers and sellers, regardless of where they are physically located. We do this by phone, chat or email.

— Is it easy for you, who grew up in India, to work in the Russian market now?

– It’s simple for me. I have experience in Russia. I have a huge number of Russian friends and I fully understand your culture and also a bit of the language.

And also for five years I worked at Amazon in 5 countries. This experience also helps me.

– Turning directly to the conversation about the Avito platform, can you voice statistical indicators, how many people visit daily, how many transactions are made?

– Avito is now used by 56 million Russians. 22 million of them visit the platform every day. Every second, 7 transactions occur on Avito – almost half a million transactions per day.

— What can you say in this regard about the Samara region?

— The region is one of the largest in Russia in terms of trading volume. And this is one of the reasons why we are in Samara today.

– What are the priorities for Avito now, what target audience are you most interested in?

– As you know, Avito has five main areas, we call them “verticals” – work, goods, cars, real estate and services. In each of these verticals, we have relevant teams working to understand what else Russians might need in order to make everything as convenient as possible for both the seller and the buyer.

We also focus on small and medium businesses. If you look at Avito from a user’s point of view, then this is “client-client”, but we have segments where the business is represented, and they are growing.

At the same time, in our work and decision-making, we proceed from the needs of the client, and not from our short-term financial profit.

Now we are focused on the development of “Avito Delivery”, and I think that this is one of the factors that allows us to actively grow. On Avito you can find anything, for any price, anywhere, without worrying about the security of the transaction and delivery.

Our delivery has already been used by 45 million users. The volume of this service has increased seven times over the past year. And in 2022, we plan to invest 3.5 billion rubles in the development and improvement of this product.

— Logistics chains are changing a lot now. How does this situation affect Avito?

We are a very flexible company. When some services left Russia, we immediately came with flexible solutions for short-term rental of real estate, so that the Russians would not feel inconvenience. Foreign delivery companies are leaving the country, but Russian users will receive their goods on time, and I think they will receive them even faster, because we are developing this service.

In the spring, we entered into a partnership with ExMail and are jointly launching delivery points – parcel lockers, Russian Post, Sber Logistics, Boxberry.

– Over the past six months, have the audience and its requests changed somehow?

– Yes and no. You, as a client, are always looking for Avito – where I can buy something I need of good quality, but at a bargain price. Accordingly, this is how it still works.

Over the past five to six months, we have seen positive changes in the “services” and “work” verticals, as well as an increase in the volume of used car listings. Real estate and goods are also on the rise.

Another important aspect is that Avito users often post ads for products that are given away for free. Today, 25 million users give away their things for free through Avito. And in the current situation, this is a huge support for a large number of people.

In May, we noted 100 million ads on Avito, and now there are more than 110 million – this is a record figure. We recorded that in 2022, the intensity of new ads posted by users more than doubled compared to 2021 and 2020. Avito is now the most massive commerce platform in Russia. 20 million private sellers and over 3 million businesses. This is more than half of small and medium-sized businesses officially registered in Russia. We continue to actively invest in Avito to create new solutions and ensure the continuous growth of our clients’ business.

In fact, Avito is now a ready-made infrastructure for the development of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia. Today, our priority task is to provide this infrastructure to businesses. Make it reliable and convenient, profitable and useful. Help entrepreneurs find new distribution channels or, conversely, meet the needs of the population. Especially in segments where the usual market players left.

– How does Avito fight against Internet scammers, which, unfortunately, are quite numerous all over the world now?

— Cybersecurity is extremely important not only for Avito, but for any company that is present on the Internet in one way or another. Banks, online message boards, marketplaces all face these challenges. We can say that this is a side effect of the evolution of society, because more and more people go online today, and their financial transactions attract the interest of criminals.

Cyber ​​security is a cornerstone for us. Avito has the position of director of trust and security – this is Andrey Rybintsev, his job is to provide trust and security for every transaction that occurs on our platform.

If you make a transaction on Avito, we have a 100% guarantee that everything will go according to plan. But it often happens that the dialogue between the seller and the buyer leaves the Avito platform for other platforms – for messengers, and since we no longer see this, we cannot know what is happening there.

Every day we work to increase the reliability and security of our platform. Avito is not only about buying and selling at competitive prices, but also about the fact that you can trust us, and your funds and goods are safe.

– What can you advise clients on Avito to avoid unpleasant situations and completely protect themselves from scammers?

“Our service has a great messenger built into it, where the seller and the buyer can communicate, and we would like all our users to communicate through it, because here we can guarantee security.

– You have a very interesting feature on the topic of security – account verification through “Gosuslugi”. How successful is this experience?

– The experience is successful. About 5.5 thousand people confirm their profiles on Avito every day. Of these, 600 people are verified through the “Gosuslugi” (ESIA).

Today, almost 3 million users have already confirmed their profiles using documents, bank details or a personal account on the State Services. According to our data, verified accounts are more trusted – they attract almost 20% more traffic than those that do not have a verification badge.

Active users of the platform also apply additional protection to their accounts through the security tools that we offer. In particular, two-factor authentication was connected in 15 million Avito accounts in six months.

— Let’s be honest, in the last six months Russia has become a cybertesting ground for hackers and intruders. How much has the number of cyberattacks on the Avito website increased?

— Any cyber platform will be attacked by criminals. This is an inevitable consequence of doing business in this environment. And the more popular your platform, your service, the higher the likelihood that they will be attacked.

Over the past six months, we have grown, and we can say that today Avito is the largest online platform for private ads in the world. This status is confirmed by Similar Web data. Therefore, yes, we are subject to a huge number of cyberattacks, in March and April, record levels of DDoS attacks on the company’s services were recorded.

Did we care? No. We build the infrastructure of our system in such a way that even with the strongest cyber attack, we still have 99% of the capacity that is available to users in reserve.

– Let’s say you have very strong cyber protection, but there is also the security of personal data. And this is where new requirements come in. How do these changes in legislation affect the work of your site?

– We have no violations of personal data – Roskomnadzor came to us with a detailed audit, we successfully passed it without comment.

When we first created Avito, we already understood that we needed to build everything in such a way that users would have maximum trust in us. Firstly, all user information is stored in Russia, secondly, the entire data storage infrastructure belongs to us, we do not have any cloud services and third parties. The only external service that we use is Internet channels that provide communication between our own data centers. It is especially important for people in the current context that all their data is stored here in Russia and does not cross state borders.

We fully meet all the requirements for cybersecurity and personal data protection, and I think that is why there were no comments after the Roskomnadzor audit.

– How can Avito’s work be affected by a scandalous bill involving the creation of one digital advertising operator?

— The question is very interesting and vital for us. And here I want to clarify the following. It is wrong to perceive, as a whole, searching, for example, for a tutor on the Profi.ru service, buying skates on Avito, purchasing mortgage housing using the Domclick service, an ad at a bus stop or digital advertising.

You can not treat our service as advertising at the bus stop. These are completely different things. We were formed as an online classifier. For example, you are in Vladivostok, the child has grown up, and you want to sell a stroller, but the buyer is in Murmansk. We act as a link. You can take this stroller to the post office near the house, the buyer receives it, and after making sure that this is exactly what he ordered, he pays. We help users solve their life tasks with maximum comfort.

A large number of representatives of our industry, IT companies, NGOs are applying to the State Duma to have this bill reviewed there, because it is fundamentally wrong. The comment from the Federal Antimonopoly Service was this – the law is retrograde, it kills competition in the bud.

Even if we talk only about the people who work in this industry, there are thousands of them. These are tens of billions of tax deductions. But it’s also about the customers. In this industry, many people took risks, came up with solutions, competed with each other, and it is as a result of this that the client, the buyer, ultimately wins, because he gets the most convenient solution at the best price. Why destroy something that allows you to cover the daily needs of 40% of the population?