Ozon started in 1998 as an online bookshop in Moscow. Twenty-two years later it sold everything from phones to diapers across Russia, a country with eleven time zones and long stretches of bad road. The pandemic had pushed millions of Russians to shop online for the first time. Ozon went public on Nasdaq in November 2020, valued at $6.2 billion, and its stock rose 34 percent on the first day.

Books First, Then Everything

Ozon was set up in Moscow by Reksoft, a Russian software house. In 1999 ru-Net Holdings, led by Leonid Boguslavsky, bought a controlling stake. The bet was that Russia would shop online as the West did, if someone built the warehouses and delivery network first. Ozon built both. It opened its site to outside sellers and became a marketplace. Pickup points and lockers filled in where couriers could not reach.

Cut Off From Nasdaq

Ozon priced an upsized offering at $30 a share on November 23, 2020, well above its range, and raised about $990 million. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Nasdaq halted trading in Ozon's shares and moved to delist them. Ozon appealed twice and lost. In October 2023 it announced a voluntary delisting. Its shares now trade on the Moscow Exchange.

Cover: Painting with Troika, Vasily Kandinsky. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a troika (Russian winter delivery).