Description

The platform was launched in 2022, rebranded in 2024, and continues to evolve today.

Avito is the largest online platform for peer-to-peer commerce and an IT market leader. Used by upwards of 70 million people monthly, the platform has a solid standing in the core segments: Consumer Goods, Auto, Jobs, Services, Real Estate, and Travel.

As the brand scaled up, it came to grips with a new challenge with users expecting social responsibility on top of convenience and transaction safety. Increasingly more often these days, the major tech companies are assessed through ESG optics.

The past few years have made us realize just how important it is to be able to give help promptly. The past natural calamities and environmental emergencies have sharpened the need for coordinated aid action. Many people are willing to help, but they often find that no instruments of assistance are readily available.

This gave us the idea to augment the platform with a social support vehicle, and thus the project #IHelp came into existence – a mutual assistance ecosystem connecting victims, volunteers, NGOs, and millions of users sharing the passion for helping others and commitment to responsible consumption.

The key idea behind the project #IHelp is to complement Avito functionality with an easy, user-friendly tool for practical mutual assistance. Avito now offers users a new way to engage with social and eco initiatives via the familiar platform interface, so that help can be given or received naturally as if it were a regular purchase or sale of goods.

What makes the idea special is that it springs from the very nature of Avito: the mission of helping everyone make their own and other people’s lives better is in the company’s DNA. The campaign demonstrated that the networking ecosystem routinely employed for commercial transactions can be used just as effectively to help people in predicament.

With the new Avito infrastructure, users themselves become actors in the process, making their own choice of a social initiative to join or contribute to. The new networking idea has established Avito firmly as a brand that rallies people behind their shared values for the sake of specific outcomes.

The outcomes of #IHelp exceeded everyone’s expectations for audience engagement. The campaign saw over RUB 500 million raised in aid, delivered to more than 200,000 people across Russia.

Users posted more than 25,000 ads offering clothes, housing and assistance during the flood in Orenburg region, providing an estimated RUB 28 million in aid overall. The Job + Housing filter, created purposely for displaced people from the regions of Kursk and Belgorod, retrieved 1.6 million vacancies with free housing or housing allowance. In Anapa on the Black Sea coast, Avito provided equipment and temporary housing for volunteers involved in trouble-shooting the aftermath of an oil leak.

Emergency response features are complemented by long-term assistance options on #IHelp. During the period from January 1, 2024 to September 1, 2025, 558 equipment requests were processed for the emergency rescue outfit LisaAlert, and donations given through the use of the Token of Kindness tool exceeded RUB 6.5 million. Our eco tools, Separate Waste Collection Map and Eco Input Counter, are doing a great job enculturating users in responsible consumption practices.

Credits

Uliana Smolskaya, Director of Public Relations and Communications, Avito
Ekaterina Arkhipova, Senior Lead for PR and Business Communications, Avito
Ekaterina Pechenik, PR Vertical Manager for Auto, Avito
Irina Volskaya, Reputation and Confidence PR Manager, Avito
Olga Alekseeva, Confidence and Safety PR Manager, Avito
Vasily Leksin, ESG Product Manager, Avito
Ekaterina Lugovaya, PR Partner for Social Projects, Avito
Inna Morozova, Senior PR Manager for Social Projects
Zhanna Chicherova, Head of Regional PR, Avito
Maksim Zhuzhgin, Head of Corporate Projects and Media Analytics, Avito
Yuri Varlamov, Head of Content and Customer Risk, Avito
Sofia Vzhesinskaya, PR Vertical Manager for Consumer Goods, Avito