Avito sold Russia on secondhand. Now it wants the whole business.

A spare chair and a vacant job do not usually belong on the same shopping list. On Avito, they belong in the same app. The Russian marketplace puts household clear-outs alongside used cars, rental apartments, repair services and recruitment. A person can arrive wanting to sell something from the hallway and return looking for somebody to renovate it. That breadth is the business: many reasons to visit, gathered under one familiar name.

Now Avito wants a larger part of the working day. Business 360 brings its categories together for small and medium-sized companies, turning a consumer habit into a place to look for equipment, suppliers and staff. The interesting question is how much work a classifieds platform can absorb before its original virtue - making a useful introduction - gets buried under everything else.

The auction came first. It did not last.

Swedish entrepreneurs Jonas Nordlander and Filip Engelbert launched Avito in 2007. Nordlander had helped build Tradera, the Swedish auction business sold to eBay; Engelbert had experience with Russia’s Yellow Pages. They brought relevant experience, but the early combination of auctions and internet directories was no automatic fit. A 2011 account of the founding describes mistakes in recruitment, marketing and the business idea itself.

The useful change was to concentrate on classifieds. Avito’s own history dates the abandonment of auctions to 2009. Sellers could advertise; interested buyers could get in touch. By 2010, a television campaign was asking what people’s clutter was worth. That is a better invitation than a lecture about ecommerce. The thing gathering dust could become money, and the person who wanted it might already be nearby.

This was also a practical response to the market. In 2012, reporting on Avito’s financing described a Russian online-shopping economy still heavily dependent on cash. Local introductions let people inspect an item, pay and carry it away. Avito did not need to persuade every household to adopt online payments before it could make a sale possible.

Nor did the audience assemble itself for free. Avito raised $26 million in 2010 and another $75 million in 2012. The latter round included Accel and Baring Vostok alongside existing backers. Television advertising and recruitment were part of the growth bill. An empty marketplace has little to recommend it; creating enough choice to bring people back takes money as well as software.

What the listing does - and what comes after

For consumers, the service is easy to describe. Find a category, narrow the search, inspect the listing and contact the seller. Avito’s app description includes maps for property searches, nearby vacancies and listings for service professionals. For sellers, it offers access to people already looking. A tradesperson needs enquiries; an employer needs applicants; a dealer needs prospective buyers. These customers are paying for different outcomes, even when the first step looks like the same advertisement.

Avito Delivery extends that introduction across distance for eligible goods. The company says the seller receives payment after the buyer collects and checks the item. This makes a listing outside someone’s neighbourhood more useful. It also gives Avito responsibility for more of the transaction: moving the parcel, coordinating payment and handling the moments when the description and the object disagree.

Cars make the information problem particularly plain. A polished photograph cannot reveal an old accident or a suspicious mileage history. Autoteka, Avito’s vehicle-history service, sells reports drawing on vehicle records, previous advertisements and data from automotive businesses. Its website identifies dealers and service networks among its contributors. Buyers can use that information to choose what to ask and whether an inspection is worth the journey.

The paid product here is evidence. A report adds context to a seller’s account; it still needs to be read as a record of available information. An attractive listing and a useful report answer different questions. That distinction explains why a marketplace might build a data business next to its advertising business rather than treating every extra feature as another way to decorate an ad.

The money is around the introduction

Avito earns through paid placement, promotion, professional tools and advertising, with data and transaction services adding other ways to charge. An early description of its revenue model already separated private-user payments, business storefronts and advertising projects. The commercial seller has needs that a household selling one chair does not: managing many listings, measuring responses and deciding where to spend again.

Avito Pro addresses that ongoing work through listing management and performance analysis. The economic proposition is straightforward: a seller may pay to be found, then pay for tools that make repeated selling easier. MTS’s 2024 annual report also describes a technology partnership allowing its advertising customers to run campaigns on Avito. The marketplace’s audience can be valuable even to a business that is not posting an ordinary classified.

In 2023, Avito’s main operating company, KEH eCommerce, reported RUB100.9 billion in revenue, up 56.7 percent. The scope matters. This is an operating-company accounting figure, not the total value of cars, apartments and other things advertised on the platform. Marketplace numbers can look interchangeable at a glance. This one measures the company’s receipts, not the size of its users’ combined shopping basket.

There is no single price that describes selling through Avito. Category, promotion and transaction choices affect the bill. For a business, the useful calculation is what remains after those costs, delivery and the work needed to answer enquiries. A busy inbox is only helpful when enough of those conversations produce worthwhile orders.

Business 360 goes after the spreadsheet

The September 2024 pilot announcement explained the problem in unusually recognisable terms. Business buyers were jumping between search engines, social groups, tender platforms and specialist websites, then calling suppliers and comparing terms manually. The proposed answer brought goods, services, property, vehicles and recruitment into a dedicated space. Avito cited more than four million active SME representatives already using its platform.

Quote requests were an early feature, initially covering business equipment. Supplier discovery was another part of the plan. The change in emphasis is significant: a business needs to find someone it can buy from repeatedly, not simply the cheapest item available this afternoon. Organising that search around suppliers gives the marketplace a different job.

Consider a small workshop as an illustration, not a customer case study. Its owner might need a machine, replacement parts, premises and another employee. Those searches fit categories Avito already has. The opportunity is to make their connection useful. The test is whether the business experience saves time after the first click, when specifications, availability and delivery terms start to matter.

The practical lesson for a seller is to test one clearly defined job before committing more money. List a specific product, answer the questions it attracts and compare completed orders with the time and promotion spend involved. For a buyer, ask suppliers for the same specification and delivery terms so the offers can actually be compared. These are ways to judge the service, not promises about the results. Avito can put more candidates on the screen; the business still has to decide which offer is worth accepting.

One marketplace, several kinds of rival

That range puts Avito into overlapping contests. Auto.ru is an alternative for vehicles, Cian for property and HeadHunter for recruitment. A person buying goods can also compare offers with retail marketplaces. The competition changes with the purchase; a company can be strong at introducing local buyers and sellers without being the preferred destination for every task.

Avito’s breadth creates a plausible advantage: a customer who already knows the service has another reason to return. But that is an interpretation of its product range, not proof that breadth always wins. Specialist searches may need deeper filters, better professional information or a denser local selection. Business 360 must earn repeat use in those details.

The people building those details publish an unusually accessible account of their intentions. Avito’s public playbook stresses user needs, quick reasoned decisions, cooperation and measurable results. Simplicity is an explicit value. For a service with so many categories, that is a demanding promise: the internal complexity must not become the customer’s homework.

The expensive lesson was attention

Growth beyond Russia once looked appealing too. In a 2021 interview, Nordlander described travelling between Morocco, Cairo and Moscow for almost two years. He later judged the expansion a bad decision because it diluted time and resources that could have gone into Russia. His comparison was an estimate of opportunity cost, not an audited statement of losses.

“Keep things simple, stay focused and don’t stray away too early”

Jonas Nordlander · Accel interview, 2021

The warning has a specific application to Business 360. Extending an existing customer relationship can be sensible when the audience and suppliers are already present. The same approach becomes harder where local supply is thin, delivery is uneconomic or a specialist offers a more dependable answer. A familiar logo can get someone to try a service; it cannot do the purchasing work for them.

Avito’s ownership has changed substantially along the way. Prosus agreed to sell the group to Kismet for RUB151 billion in 2022. In April 2025, a company managed by Rosselkhozbank acquired 50 percent. The bank had helped finance the earlier purchase. These were ownership transactions, distinct from the growth capital raised in Avito’s early years.

The product keeps reaching into adjacent routines. By September 2026, Avito had announced mobile-phone top-ups through its wallet, allowing sale proceeds to help pay for mobile service. It is a small, revealing addition. Avito’s next stage depends on finding more such reasons to stay: useful enough that the person who came to clear a hallway might return to run an office.