The sharing economy in our country grew by 2020% in 39, exceeding RUB 1 trillion. The top three market segments remained unchanged: hand-to-hand sales, job search and carsharing
The volume of the sharing economy in our country in 2020 amounted to 1,07 trillion rubles, follows from a study by RAEC and TIAR-Center (Trends has it). The annual growth of the sharing services market amounted to 39%, which means a slight slowdown in growth rates: in 2019, this sector of the economy grew by 50% compared to the previous year to 770 billion rubles.
The sharing economy includes c2c sales – both through the Avito, Yula and other platforms, as well as through ads in social networks – as well as all kinds of services for short-term rental of goods and services: online freelance exchanges, carsharing, coworking and etc.
The main growth driver of the sharing economy remains the hand-to-hand (C2C) commerce market. Its share in the entire economy of sharing consumption in our country has grown over the year from 73% to 78%, or 838 billion rubles. According to the authors of the study, the main reasons for this are not only the expansion of the number of players and the list of services provided, but also the fact that this segment takes into account delivery, which has become especially in demand with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The need to adjust the family budget introduced new users to the c2c model. The crisis introduced the old to delivery. The user base has grown and will continue to buy more as the economy recovers, supporting the growth in gross c2c transactions,” the authors of the report predict.
Services for finding a part-time job became the second largest segment of the sharing economy — 183 billion rubles. against 140 billion rubles. a year earlier. Part of the reason for the growth, experts cite tax breaks for the self-employed, which includes workers in the so-called “gig economy” (freelancers, independent contractors, and so on).
By a wide margin, the third place in terms of market volume was occupied by the car sharing segment. Due to the suspension of services at the beginning of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, the total number of trips for the year decreased from 78 million to 70 million. The revenue of car sharing services in 2020 still increased by 9% to 22,4 billion rubles. The reason was both an increase in the average car rental period and an increase in tariffs.
One of the key trends in this sector, experts of RAEC and TIAR-Center call market consolidation: small services are closed or bought out by large players. As a result, if in 2018 there were 16 car sharing operators in Moscow, in 2019 there were nine of them, and in 2020 – already six. Another trend is the suspension of the expansion of services to the regions (with the exception, perhaps, of the Kuban, which benefited from the closure of the state border).
The smallest in size, but at the same time the most dynamically developing market was the rental of things, which almost doubled over the year to 410 million rubles. Moreover, we are talking not only about clothes, but also about short-term rental of household appliances, exercise equipment and gadgets. The most promising here, the authors of the report consider the rental of game consoles and video cards.
Three segments of the sharing economy experienced a strong drop in revenue in 2020: carpooling (services for finding fellow travelers, a decrease in revenue by 36% to RUB 11,4 billion), co-living (short-term rental housing, a drop of 48% to RUB 8,1 billion .) and co-working (short-term office rental, a decrease of 28% to 6,1 billion rubles). However, the authors of the study attribute this to the short-term impact of epidemiological restrictions:
- the volume of the carpooling market, in their opinion, will return to the figures of 2019 already this year;
- co-working spaces will support changes in the labor market, the growth in the number of freelancers and the popularity of workspace sharing;
- Housing sharing will depend on the state of the global travel industry (and it’s too early to talk about the prospects for lifting restrictions in February 2021), but the successful IPO of the largest player in the AirBnb market this winter is more of a positive indicator.
In general, the authors of the study note that the sharing model allows citizens to both save on certain goods and services and receive additional income, which is important in the context of the economic crisis, provides the labor market with the necessary flexibility and creates conditions for the further growth of the sharing economy.
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