As the Chinese answer to Amazon, Alibaba dominates Chinese e-commerce, with 80 per cent of the online shopping market using the site and its subsidiaries including Tmall, Taobao and its own payment system Alipay.
Part-owned by Yahoo and Japan’s SoftBank Corp, the company that started in the apartment of former English teacher Jack Ma in 1999 reported earnings of US$2.9bn from revenue of nearly US$6.5bn through the first nine months of its last fiscal year ending in March. It now boasts 213m customers who bought more than US$248bn worth of products last year.
With initial paper work stating it will raise US$1bn, the figure is expected to eventually garner more than US$15bn, despite recent downturns in internet company stocks, including Twitter.
Offering Chinese consumers online access to electronics, clothing and fresh produce among other product lines, Alibaba is changing the way Chinese consume goods, allowing emerging markets to be cracked into. Last year, Alibaba worked alongside Northwest Cherry Growers and online fruit retailer Fruitday for an unprecedented promotion of cherries through e-retail.
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