Alibaba Group logo |
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet, Auctions, Computer software |
| Founded | Hangzhou, China (1999) |
| Headquarters | Hangzhou, China |
| Area served | China |
| Key people | Ma Yun (Jack Ma), Chairman |
| Employees | 22,000 (2010) |
| Website | www.alibaba.com |
Alibaba Group (simplified Chinese: 阿里巴巴集团; traditional Chinese: 阿里巴巴集團; pinyin:Ālǐbābā Jítuán) is a Chinese investment holding company. The company, together with its subsidiaries, are engaged in the provision of software, technology and other services on the online business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces with the uniform resource locators www.alibaba.com, www.1688.com and under the trade name Alibaba (the B2B services).
The company also provides other Internet based services, such as software applications, domain name registration, Website hosting and solutions, email hosting and technology-related consulting services on various marketplaces and platforms. It operates its business in the People’s Republic of China.
Alibaba Group and its affiliated entities:
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Jack Ma said, "One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said do you know about Alibaba? And she said yes. I said what do you know about Alibaba, and she said ‘Open sesame'. And I said yes, this is the name! Then I went onto the street and found 30 people and asked them, ‘Do you know Alibaba?’ People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China… They all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba — open sesame. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So…easy to spell, and globally known. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name Alimama, in case someone wants to marry us!"[1]
Alibaba.com Limited (HKSE: 1688.HK) (simplified Chinese:阿里巴巴网络有限公司; traditional Chinese: 阿里巴巴網絡有限公司),), the flagship company of Alibaba Group, is the world’s largest online business-to-business trading platform for small businesses.
Founded in Hangzhou in eastern China, Alibaba.com has four marketplaces. The company’s English language international marketplace (www.alibaba.com) serves to bring together importers and exporters from more than 240 countries and regions. The China marketplace (www.1688.com) is developed for domestic business-to-business trade in China. It also has a Japanese marketplace (www.alibaba.co.jp), which is focused on facilitating trade to and from Japan through an associated company. In addition, Alibaba.com offers a transaction-based wholesale platform, AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com), which allows smaller buyers to buy small quantities of goods at wholesale prices.
The company claims that together these marketplaces have more than 65 million registered users. Alibaba.com was listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the IPO price of HK$13.5 on 6 November 2007, raising HK$13.1 billion (US$1.7 billion) in the second-largest initial public offering sale of an Internet company after Google Inc.
Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com), previously known as Taobao, is the biggest C2C online shopping platform in China. Founded in 2003, it provides a wide variety of product offerings. The company claims that it served more than 370 million registered users as of the end of 2010.
Taobao Mall (www.tmall.com) was introduced in April 2008 as a dedicated B2C platform to complement Taobao’s C2C marketplace and became an independent business in June 2011. It is now a major online shopping destination for quality, brand name goods in China.
eTao was beta-launched by Taobao in October 2010 as an independent search engine and became an independent business in June 2011. It is the most comprehensive shopping search engine in China, covering product results from all major Chinese online shopping platforms.
Launched in 2004, Alipay (www.alipay.com) is a third-party online payment platform. According to analyst research report, Alipay has the biggest market share in China. The company claims it had more than 550 million registered users as of the end of 2010. In 2011, it was the largest online payment system in the world by value of transactions. [2]
Alipay provides a payment service called escrow,[2] in which consumers can verify whether they are happy with goods they have bought before releasing money to the seller.
In China, Alipay partners with more than 65 financial institutions including Visa and MasterCard to provide payment solutions for Taobao as well as more than 500,000 Chinese businesses. Internationally, Alipay helps more than 300 merchants and sellers worldwide sell directly to consumers in China. It currently supports transactions in 12 major foreign currencies. Alipay is an affiliate of Alibaba Group.
The 2009 transfer of Alipay's ownership from the Alibaba Group to a private company controlled by Jack Ma was controversial, with media reports in 2011 that Yahoo! and Softbank (Alibaba Group's controlling shareholders) were not informed of the sale for nominal value. Chinese business publication Century Weekly criticised the actions of Ma,[3] while Ma stated that Alibaba Group's board of directors were aware of the transaction. The ownership dispute was resolved by Alibaba, Yahoo! and Softbank in July 2011.[4]
Alibaba Cloud Computing aims to build an advanced data-centric cloud computing service platform, including e-commerce data mining, high-speed massive e-commerce data processing, and as well as data customization. It was established in September 2009 in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Alibaba Group.
China Yahoo!
In October 2005, Alibaba Group formed a strategic partnership with Yahoo! Inc and acquired China Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com.cn), which is a Chinese portal with a focus on essential Internet services including news, email and search.
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