In the spring of 2014, e-commerce in Ukraine remained a young industry. Online stores grew faster than shoppers' habits, and businesses operating online lived amid political instability. In winter the country had endured a change of power, and the market, by all indications, had gone through a harsh period that few could have predicted a few years earlier.
That day's AIN.UA roundup consisted of links to fresh texts. Alongside the piece about the market were interviews and columns by Anton Nossik, an article on why offices would soon empty out, and other publications. Nossik was a regular speaker at iForum, and his presence in the digest was no accident: Ukraine's internet community in those years was small and tightly connected.
What Withstood the Test
The main thesis of the piece, which was carried in the roundup's headline, reads:
e-commerce in Ukraine withstood the test of brutal rule by the previous government
The text asserts that the market did not collapse, and online stores survived and continued to operate. Among those who stood firm were Rozetka, one of Ukraine's largest online retailers, and other smaller players. For an industry that was only taking shape, such resilience was an important signal: commerce via the internet was ceasing to be an experiment and becoming a business in its own right.
At the same time, optimism did not mean an absence of problems. The author, according to the roundup's compiler, saw two main constraints. The first was excessive monopolization of the market, with a few large players taking the lion's share of sales and leaving little room for newcomers. The second concerned mobile shopping, which in 2014 was poorly developed: sites were rarely adapted to phone screens, and purchases from a smartphone remained more the exception than the habit.
An Internet Veteran in the Technology Market
Alexey Mas was one of the notable figures of the Ukrainian internet. In January 1999, together with Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network, UBS. The project was written in Perl, the work took three weeks, and costs amounted to about $100. A few months later Mas became part of the team that developed advertising and information services, and in 2000 he headed the Ukrainian portal UAPortal.
His interests were not limited to search and advertising networks. Mas was the architect of Mail.ua, a project launched in closed beta in 2008 with investment from the Internet Invest group of more than $1 million. In July and August 2012 the mail service passed to Mail.ru Group. According to unofficial data cited by publications of the time, the deal was valued at around $500,000, and the audience stood at about 300,000 users. Mail.Ru Group vice president Anna Artamonova confirmed the purchase.
Mas was also at the origins of iForum. The first Ukrainian Forum of Internet Figures took place on April 1, 2009, to mark UBS's tenth anniversary, and drew 1,280 participants. Mas compiled the forum's program and moderated the track devoted to internet business. In April 2014 he also compiled the program of the sixth iForum, and the forum itself was held against the backdrop of a war that in those weeks was already affecting the life of the entire country.
In an interview with UserAndLINUX published a couple of months after the AIN.UA piece, Mas called e-commerce the second big wave of change after information security. According to him, over-regulation of electronic payments remains a brake on that wave.
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