Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Kirill Lunev headed the Yandex car-sharing service, the second largest in Russia with 16 thousand cars. Yandex Drive and Yandex Car Sharing generated a net loss of almost 4 billion rubles by the end of 2023.
Car-sharing service Yandex Drive has replaced its CEO
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Kirill Lunev has become the CEO of Yandex car sharing service Yandex Drive LLC and Yandex Car Sharing LLC. The official appointment took place on July 16, RB.RU reported. Previously, the company was headed by Sergey Kovalev.
Yandex Drive’s press service confirmed Lunev’s appointment. The company explained that Kirill Lunev has been working at Yandex for 10 years, five of them in the Drive team, where he headed the efficiency and machine learning group, and then the analytics service. Kirill Lunev is a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, according to the company.
“Drive will continue to focus on developing its core business areas: the B2C segment, service expansion, as well as subscription (long-term car rental) and B2B,” the company said.
The press service did not comment on Kovalev’s fate.
Both LLCs headed by Lunev are unprofitable. Yandex Drive’s net loss reached 3.5 billion rubles by the end of 2023, and Yandex Car Sharing’s – 387 million rubles.
The directors of the two LLCs change every year. Kovalev has worked at the Yandex car-sharing service since its foundation, held the position of head of the analytics department, and in 2023 headed the company. Before him, the car-sharing service was headed by Alexey Nikolaev (appointed in 2022) and Anton Ryazanov (in 2021).
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Yandex Carsharing is the owner of Yandex Drive and its founder is Yandex Technologies LLC, whose ultimate beneficiary is MKPAO Yandex.
The Yandex Drive app offers 16,000 cars for rent by the minute, hour, day and “a dozen models for very long-term rentals of a month, including hundreds of new Chery Tiggo crossovers,” its description reads. Cars can be rented in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan and Sochi and in 42 other regions of Russia.
According to estimates by the B1 Group of Companies, by the end of 2023 the Russian car-sharing market will reach 44 billion rubles, and by 2028 it may increase to 234 billion rubles. According to analysts, the share of carsharing in the total demand for various types of mobility, including taxis, car rentals, etc., will increase. Car-sharing is perceived as a more universal form of transport, suitable, among other things, for intercity travel.
On average, car sharing costs a Russian consumer 35% less than a taxi per year and 3 times less than maintaining their own car, B1 calculated. The main players in the Russian car sharing market are Delimobil, Yandex Drive, Citydrive and Belka. By the end of 2022, Yandex Drive’s share of the car sharing market was 24%, both in terms of the number of cars and trips.