The founder of the large online retailer Holodilnik.ru, Valery Kovalev, has died

The founder and owner of one of Russia's largest online sellers of equipment , Holodilnik.ru, Valery Kovalev died at the age of 51, TASS reports with reference to the executive director of Wikimedia.ru and a little later confirmed by representatives of Holodilnik.ru . Kovalev was also known as one of the main authors of the Russian-language Wikipedia.

According to the Wikinews resource, Kovalev died on the night of December 31, 2021; the cause of death has not been reported. His main business project, Holodilnik.ru, was several times included in the list of the most valuable Internet companies in Russia according to Forbes. At the end of 2014, the company took ninth place in this ranking.

“This is a big and irreparable loss for all of us. He wrote a huge number of high-quality articles on Wikipedia,” TASS quotes Stanislav Kozlovsky, executive director of Wikimedia.ru. Kovalev wrote on Wikipedia under the nickname NoFrost.

Representatives of Holodilnik.ru on the evening of January 5 confirmed the death of the founder. “We are sad to announce that on December 31, 2021, Valery Valeryevich Kovalev, founder and member of the Board of Directors of the Edil-Import company, operator of the online store Kholodilnik.ru, passed away. The cause of death was acute coronary insufficiency [disorder of the cardiovascular system - The Bell],” the statement said.

Co-founder and current CEO of the company Dmitry Fomichev noted that it was under the management of Valery Kovalev that Kholodilnik.ru became one of the leaders in the Russian online trading market. According to him, the company’s management will continue to implement Kovalev’s vision for the strategic development of Edil-Import. Kholodilnik.ru will continue to operate as normal.