Which sharing services do Russians choose?

Russians began to spend more on goods and services of joint consumption. The number of purchases in the sharing economy segment increased by more than 20% in 2023, according to analysts from the Check Index resource. According to their data, the average bill in this market increased by 15% and exceeded 1,130 rubles. The highest increase occurred in the rental of power banks: clients used it a third more often and spent 18% more than in 2022. The three most growing ones also included scooter rental and car sharing.

However, not only the usual transport rental services are in trend now, but also other areas, said Alexander Chulok, director of the Center for Scientific and Technological Forecasting at the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at the Higher School of Economics: “The sharing economy operates with those goods, services, and benefits that can be divided and whose usefulness for a particular user does not decrease. If someone else takes advantage of this, it can cover a lot of different directions. This could be food sharing or voluntary clothing sharing.

For Russia, this will also be connected with labor resources, because, unfortunately, we find ourselves in very tough conditions in all areas. And the emergence of such exchanges for professionals who can easily use their skills and competencies while working for a large number of specialists is quite logical. There are already such precedents in the country. I think that this will begin to expand, and it will be possible to be quite active in almost all sectors – from furniture assembly to advice on the development of science and technology – to attract the best resources for a limited time, that is, to also share them with someone.

As for business prospects, we must invest first of all in the platforms themselves, because today you provide sharing of agricultural machinery, tomorrow it could be sharing related to winemaking and viticulture, and the day after tomorrow you will switch to creating additional services within the framework of the data economy.

That is, in this sense, there is no need to look narrowly and try to invest in one thing, and then think whether the project will work or not. This is a concept from the last century. It is worth investing in platforms, services and ecosystems of the sharing economy that can be sufficiently adaptive to the market.”

The sharing market in the Russian Federation was actively growing until recently before the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Russian Association of Electronic Communications, if in 2019 its volume was 770 billion rubles, then in 2020 it broke the 1 trillion ruble mark. However, now not all areas in the sharing economy are profitable from a business point of view, noted Associate Professor of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Logistics of the Russian Economic University. Plekhanov Igor Stroganov:

“The sharing economy in a global sense means that you don’t have your own things, you use something else. For example, in the West there is a trend of coliving. In fact, this is a hostel, but it is beautifully named, this is a new format for reading this service.

Several companies tried to engage in coliving before the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, as far as I know, none of them are making normal money right now. All of them were reformatted either into hotels or hostels.

In addition, before the introduction of sanctions, there was a format when a number of large companies offered not exactly sharing, but rather leasing: you could pay a certain amount and use laptops, set-top boxes, phones and the like. Due to the restrictions introduced, some brands left the Russian market and ceased to support this program and, accordingly, to work fully.”

Some Western companies, meanwhile, have begun testing non-standard sharing methods. For example, the American electronics manufacturer HP has announced plans to create a subscription service for its printers. It is expected that users will be able to print up to 20 pages per month for $7. The company provides the device and ink free of charge. However, the company left Russia in 2022.

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Vladimir Rasulov