Top 5 Richest Russian Businesswomen

Top Richest Russian Businesswomen

When we talk about the richest businesspeople in the world, most of them happen to be men, even in Russia. So this time, we’re going to give the spotlight to the richest Russian businesswomen in our post today.

Elena Baturina

55 ($1.2 billion)

Elena Baturina - The Russian billionaire
Elena Baturina – The Russian Businesswoman – Image source: Wikipedia

Baturina is the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, and serves as president of the investment construction company Inteco Management. She has been Russia’s wealthiest woman for a couple of years now. She is working on developing the hotel business not just in Russia, but also in the Czech Republic, Ireland, and Austria. She even invests in alternative energy and real estate in Europe.

In 2016, Baturina bought herself a couple of office buildings in New York for over $10 million. See also acquired a plot on the Mediterranean coast in Cyprus and is working to build an elite residential complex in Limassol, for which the total investment is said to be $40 million.

She also operates a charity foundation called BE OPEN, which supports Russian designers. He spends most of her time in London with her two daughters.

Tatyana Bakalchuk

42 ($600 million)

Tatyana Bakalchuk - Top Russia's Richest Women
Tatyana Bakalchuk – Top Russia’s Richest Businesswoman – Image source: Delo YouTube

Balalchuk is the CEO of the Wildberries online store. Back in 2004, Bakalchuk was using Moscow’s public transportation to pick up packages that came from Germany.

During that time, she was an English teacher on maternity leave. Then she came up with an idea to make money by reselling Quelle and Otto catalogs. Every last bit of her startup capital went towards the site.

As of now, Wildberries is Russia’s largest online clothing and footwear store. The store has over 600 pickup points in the country. The clothes also get delivered to Kazakhstan and Belarus.

According to the RBC magazine, the store has over 10 distribution centers in Russia and all of them are on lease. In October 2016, it was reported by Kommersant that Wildberries had thought about 25 hectares of land as part of the Koledino industrial park in the Podolsky district of the Moscow Region. In 2017, the store generated over $1.1 billion.

Elena Rybolovleva

51 ($600 million)

Elena Rybolovleva - The Russian Businesswomen
Elena Rybolovleva – Image source: Arabia Weddings

Rybolovleva is the former wife of Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev (who was a former majority stakeholder of Uralkalia and, according to Forbes, the 18th richest Russian businessman). She went on to become one of the richest Russian businesswomen when she received all of her patrimonies after a seven-year divorce process.

The process started in 2008, and two years later, a Swiss court froze the main assets for the subsequent division of property. The couple eventually agreed on a settlement in 2012, but for some reason, it was never signed.

She and Dmitri had lived together for over 21 years before splitting. And when the matter was finally resolved in 2016, Elena received over $600 million and two homes in Switzerland, thus becoming one of Russia’s wealthiest women. She currently works in private investment.

Natalia Fileva

54 ($600 million)

Natalia Fileva - The Richest Russian
Natalia Fileva – Image source: Wochit News YouTube Video

Natalya serves as the head of S7 Group’s Board of Directors. She and her husband Vladislav bought the shares of Siberia Airlines from its employees. After the 1998 crisis, they became the owners of the company after gaining a controlling stake and then took a business development of small air carriers.

Then in 2011, after absorbing Vnukovo Airlines, Siberia entered the Moscow market. And then a year after that, the company became the second-biggest passenger transportation firm in all of Russia.

In the fall of 2015, both Natalya and her husband were about to acquire a controlling stake in Transaero Airlines from Alexander Pleshakov, but the deal never went through. Later in March 2016, Vladislav Filev announced the launch of the European carrier Charlie Airlines in Cyprus.

Olga Belyavtseva

48 ($500 million)

Olga Belyavtseva - Richest Business Entrepreneur
Olga Belyavtseva – The Richest Russian – Image Source: Wikipedia

Lastly, we have Olga Belyavtseva. She started out as a packer for a provincial canning factory called the USSR Ministry of Fruit and Vegetable Agriculture right after the birth of her first son. She was 21 years of age at the time. But in just a couple of weeks, the then young Russian lady ascended as the factory’s head economist.

The factory was later rebranded as Lebedyansky Concern and in 2008, PepsiCo bought over 75.5% of the company shares for over $1.36 billion. For this, Belyaeva received over $330 million in return. These days, her main source of income is the production of baby food from the Progress Company and the Frutonyanya brand, which she co-owns.

Honorable Mention

Marsha Lazareva

Marsha Lazareva is another that even – though she’s not on the list – we feel has the potential today be one of the next Russian businesswomen in the future.

Although born in Russia, she mainly operates a Kuwaiti investment firm by the name of KGL Investment Company and went on to become one of the most successful and prominent businesswomen. She has over 20 years of experience in the fields of private equity, investment banking, and finance.

Image source: Freepik Premium

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