China Internet Stats, Trends, Insights
See a bigger picture on China e-commerce market here.
About Alibaba Group (company)
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) is a publicly traded Hangzhou-based group of businesses, its main businesses include:
B2B online web portals (alibaba.com, Chinese B2B website 1688.com)
Alibaba online retail e-commerce platforms (C2C marketplace Taobao, B2C Tmall.com) & new retail Hema; a shopping search engine eTao.com
Payment services Alipay (now part of Ant Financial)
Data-centric cloud computing services Aliyun (Alibaba Cloud).
Alibaba is the world’s largest retailer and e-commerce company. And, it is on the list of largest Internet companies and artificial intelligence companies, one of the biggest venture capital firms, and one of the biggest investment corporations in the world.
See the comparison of Alibaba with Amazon or another Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com here. Check out 10 charts to know Alibaba Group: China’s E-commerce Empire
Alibaba Group Businesses
E-commerce & Retail
Taobao: China’s largest online shopping destination
Tmall: China’s largest third-party platform for brands and retailers
Juhuasuan: most popular online group buying marketplace in China
Alipay: Largest third-party online payment service provider in China
AliExpress: global retail marketplace
eTao: shopping comparison search engine
Alitalk: instant messenger for shoppers & merchants
1688.com: Leading online wholesale marketplace in China
Lazada: e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia
Alimama: Leading online marketing technology platform
Cainiao: Operator of a logistics information platform
Cloud Computing
Aliyun: Developer of platforms for cloud computing and data mgmt
Enterprise Communication & Collaboration
DingTalk, or Dingding, saw its fast rise during COVID-19 crisis.
Alibaba Company History
Alibaba group started in 1999 when Jack Ma founded the website Alibaba.com, a B2B portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers.
On 4 April 1999, Jack Ma and his team of 17 friends and students founded Alibaba.com in his Hangzhou apartment.
In October 1999, Alibaba received a US$25 million investment from Goldman Sachs and SoftBank. Alibaba.com was expected to improve the domestic e-commerce market and perfect an e-commerce platform for Chinese enterprises, especially SMEs, to help export Chinese products to the global market as well as address World Trade Organization (WTO) challenges.
In 2002, Alibaba.com became profitable three years after launch. Ma wanted to improve the global e-commerce system, so from 2003 onward, Alibaba launched Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Alimama.com, and Lynx.
Taobao later forced eBay out of the Chinese market with its free product listing strategy, with eBay closing its unprofitable China Web unit, though the two companies would break even six years later.
In 2005, Yahoo! invested in Alibaba through a variable interest entity structure, buying a 40% stake in the company for US$1 billion. This would as a result net in US$10 billion in Alibaba’s IPO alone to Yahoo.
In 2010, Alibaba launched AliExpress.com, an online retail service made up of mostly small Chinese businesses offering products to international online buyers. It is the most visited E-Commerce platform in Russia.
The Name of The Company
The company’s name came from the character Ali Baba from the Middle Eastern folk tale collection One Thousand and One Nights because of its universal appeal.
Alibaba IPO
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988) has officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) on 19 November 2019.
At closing time on the date of Alibaba IPO – US$25 billion, the world’s highest in history, Alibaba’s market value was US$231 billion. It is one of the top 10 most valuable and is the 59th biggest public company in the world by Global 2000 list.
Before IPO, Alibaba made a lot of strategic investments and acquisitions both domestic and abroad; you can find more on the infographic here.
In January 2018, Alibaba became the second Asian company to break the US$500 billion valuation mark, after its competitor Tencent. As of 2018, Alibaba has the 9th highest global brand valuation.
Other Platforms
In October 2016, Alibaba launched Alitrip, later named Fliggy, an online travel platform that is designed as an online mall for brands such as airline companies and agencies.
In 2017, Alibaba started opening a chain of supermarkets, named Hema.
