Tatyana Bakalchuk

Tatyana Vladimirovna Bakalchuk (Татья́на Влади́мировна Бакальчу́к; Kim, Ким, 김; born on 16 October 1975) is a Russian entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Wildberries, the largest Russian online retailer, and the country's first self-made woman billionaire. As of July 2024, Forbes estimated her net worth at US$7.4 billion.

Early life
Tatiana Bakalchuk was born on October 16, 1975, in a Koryo-saram family. She finished school in Moscow oblast and graduated from Kolomna University. She planned to move to Moscow and continue her education as a designer. Still, she had to abandon that plan and return to teaching English when the 1998 financial crisis struck Russia. Tatyana Bakalchuk was an English teacher.

In the early 2000s, she met her future husband Vladislav Bakalchuk, an entrepreneur and a founder of Utech ISP. In 2004, after giving birth to her first child, Bakalchuk launched Wildberries, which initially focused on reselling apparel from Otto and Quelle catalogs.

According to the company’s official history, Bakalchuk started the business without capital, experience, or professional education. However, she obtained starting capital from her husband, Vladislav Bakalchuk. Notably, this sum was estimated at several million dollars. Shortly before that, he sold the Internet provider UTech to Gazprombank for 7,5 million dollars.

The Bell's source claims that the Bakalchuks did not initially sell clothes solely from Otto or Quelle catalogs. Namely, they also sold garments in a second-hand store in the “Dynamite” shopping center in the Vykhino-Zhulebino District. The store was marketed as an outlet with 1000 models of second-hand clothes from Europe. Some of the items were also distributed through a webpage. In 2003, the shopping center’s address was listed in the contacts of the D-Luxe catalog made by Bakalchuk’s and Fadeev’s UT Design studio. Contrary to this, Wildberries claims that the second-hand store was not affiliated with the company.

Career
By 2006, Wildberries got an office in Milkovo, Moscow region, a team of couriers, phone operators, and an IT crew. By that time, the company started to sell apparel by small local European brands and the excess stock of old collections of well-known brands. Wildberries was among the first Russian e-commerce companies to offer a flat delivery rate and free try-on and to build a network of pick-up points with fitting rooms. By 2020, the company operated over 7,000 pick-up points.

During the 2014—2016 financial crisis, Wildberries switched to a platform business model (the one employed by Amazon). The company benefited from the dramatic increase in online orders during the COVID-19 pandemic (starting in 2020).

Moreover, Tatyana Bakalchuk established Wildberries Holdings Ltd in Cyprus in 2018.

Tatiana and Vladislav Bakalchuk own Wildberries. By 2022, according to a Data Insight report, Wildberries was the largest e-store in Russia. In 2019, the company's value was estimated at $1 billion, which made Bakalchuk the second woman in Russia to become a billionaire, and by 2020, she became the wealthiest woman in Russia, worth $1.4 billion. Forbes US edition noted Bakalchuk as one of the most notable new billionaires. By 2021, her fortune grew by 800% (compared to 2020) to $13 billion. It is believed that Denis Manturov and Mikhail Mishustin are the patrons of Wildberries.

Headed by Manturov, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade drafted a government decree in 2020. The decree proposed to subsidize Russian marketplaces’ logistics expenses. The absence of foreign shareholders was the primary condition for receiving governmental support. Consequently, only one marketplace – Wildberries – could meet these criteria.

Moreover, in 2020, Tatyana Bakalchuk acquired Standard-Credit Bank, which Samvel Karapetyan's Tashir Holding previously controlled. The bank was renamed Wildberries Bank. According to information from the "Banki.ru" webpage, in October-November the same year, the bank’s net assets decreased by 31,4 million rubles, and its loan portfolio lost almost 23,5 million rubles. Furthermore, according to the "Bank Analysis" website, at the beginning of 2022, more than 65% of Standard-Credit's assets consisted of credits. Some media argue that the bank's purchase was necessary to withdraw cash from the debt-ridden retailer.

From 2021 to 2022, Bakalchuk was a member of the Supervisory Board of VTB Bank, which is an entirely pro-Kremlin bank. In December 2021, she joined the All-Russia People's Front.

In 2021, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development added four new categories (including e-commerce) to the list of preinstalled applications. Only Wildberries could meet the proposed criteria.

In 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Trade publicly stated that the online market Wildberries sells counterfeit products.

After the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Bakalchuk was reportedly personally involved in talks with the Russian Federal AntiMonopoly Service over the legalising parallel imports (importing products from abroad without the permission of the trademark owner).

The sales turnover of Wildberries increased in 2022. Compared to 2021, it grew by 98% and amounted to 1,669 trillion rubles. This sum constitutes one-third of the total sales turnover of Russian online commerce in 2022.

In April 2023, Tatyana Bakalchuk announced the search for a new Russian-language brand instead of Wildberries due to the ban on using foreign words in Russian advertising. In 2022, the marketplace changed the name of its website to Yagodki for one day as part of a marketing campaign.

Sanctions
In 2021, the government of Ukraine imposed sanctions over Tatyana and Vladislav Bakalchuk and Wildberries for selling Russian military uniforms and anti-Ukrainian literature.

After the Russian special military operation in 2022, Poland added Wildberries and Bakalchuk to its sanctions list because of Bakalchul’s connections with VTB Bank.

Forbes ranking
Tatyana Bakalchuk is the richest woman in Russia. Along with Yelena Baturina, they are the only two female billionaires in the country. In December 2021, Forbes named Tatyana Bakalchuk, who owns 99 percent of the Wildberries e-commerce platform, the wealth growth dynamic leader among the world's billionaires. In 2021, her business grew by over 1,000 percent. Until December 31, 2019, Tatyana was the sole owner, but then she transferred 1% to her husband Vladislav Bakalchuk, thus moving their family to the first place in the Forbes ranking of Russia's richest families—ahead of the Rotenbergs. According to experts, transferring a share of the property is purely technical. Under Russian legislation, organizations with a sole owner cannot create 100% subsidiaries. The joint ownership of the company will enable Wildberries to create subsidiaries under a simplified procedure, building the structure of a more successful corporation.

Personal life
She is married to Vladislav Bakalchuk, they have four children, and live in Moscow.

Bakalchuk has a sister - Maria Andreeva (née Kim). According to information from her social networks, Andreeva works at Wildberries and has another sister, 20-year-old Albina Tsoy. In turn, Tsoy listed Maxim and Nadezhda Kim among her close relatives. They are also Wildberries employees.

Tatyana Bakalchuk’s brother, Yuri Tsoy, is a former CEO of Starprofi. He is a nephew of Sergei Tsoy - Rosneft vice president and former head of Yury Luzhkov's press service. Sergei Tsoy’s wife, Anna Kim, is known by the pseudonym Anita Tsoy. She is believed to be a family friend of Rosneft head Igor Sechin.