HANGZHOU, China — The Alibaba Group, a Chinese company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet and technology, is showing interest in moving into the Russian market.

According to Coresight Research, Alibaba plans to form a joint venture with the Russian Direct Investment Fund and two Russian companies, Megafon and Mail.ru Group, with Alibaba investing $100 million in the venture. Earlier this month, Alibaba announced it will turn its platform AliExpress Russia into a joint venture by forming a new company AliExpress Russia JV. AliExpress is Alibaba's international B2C e-commerce platform that helps Chinese merchants sell to overseas consumers.

In addition, Coresight said JD.com, China's largest online retailer, partnered with Russian e-commerce platform Yandex.Market to allow the platform to sell JD.com goods starting later this month. Yandex.Market is an e-commerce joint venture between Russian search engine Yandex and Sberbank, one of the largest banks in Russia. In 2015, Yandex set up an office in Shanghai to help Chinese merchants tap the Russian market.

China has been a major exporter to Russia, and cross-border e-commerce trade between the two countries has been increasing, according to Coresight. Data from China's Commerce Ministry shows that China and Russia cross-border e-commerce reached $3.7 billion in the first nine months of 2018, up 23% year-over-year.

The increasing number of Russian online shoppers will likely drive further demand for imported goods.

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