Who is Alibaba Group ?

Who is Alibaba Group?

Alibaba.com is the first online business that appeared since year 1999 by Jack Ma (Ma Yun). Basically, Alibaba.com is owned by Alibaba Group which its owner and founder is Jack Ma. Alibaba Group is privately owned Hangzhou-based family of internet-based company which contains business-to-business online marketplaces, retail and payment platforms, shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. The business started in 1999 with the web domain Alibaba.com a business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. After four years, Alibaba Group managed to generates sales and revenue up to 1.1 trillion yuan which is $170 billion USD.

Taobao.com

At the same time, Alibaba Group had created a new online shopping web which called Taobao.com which is similar to e-Bay and Amazon in year 2003. The company primarily operates in the People’s Republic of China. The company allows the buyers to judge the seller’s credit from their selling prestige, or the history of comment and complaint and also providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores that mainly cater to consumers.

In April 2008, Taobao introduced Taobao Mall to complement its consumer-to-consumer marketplace. Since then, Taobao Mall has established itself as the destination for quality, brand name goods for Chinese consumers. Taobao Mall launched an independent web domain, tmall.com, and enhanced its focus on product verticals and improvements in shopping experience in November 2010. It became an independent business in June 2011 and changed its Chinese name to Tian Mao (Tmall) in January 2012.

In 2008, Taobao also announced the “Big Taobao” strategy with the aim of becoming a provider of e-commerce infrastructure services for all e-commerce market participants, hence fueling the overall growth of the online shopping industry.

In October 2010, Taobao beta launched eTao as an independent online shopping search engine, providing product and merchant information from a number of major consumer e-commerce websites in China.

In May 2011, Alibaba Group opened a physical furniture store in Beijing under the Taobao Mall brand. The five-story 25,000sqm Taobao Mall iFengChao Furniture Showroom opened as a complement to their online stores.

In June 2011, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Jack Ma revealed that Taobao will be split into three different companies: Taobao Marketplace, Tmall.com , and eTao (a shopping search engine). The move was said to be necessary for Taobao to “meet competitive threats that emerged in the past two years during which the Internet and e-commerce landscape has changed dramatically.”

From 2012 onwards, Taobao began to accept international Visa and MasterCard credit cards; prior, only domestic banks were supported by AliPay. The plan to support international credit cards was announced in late 2011.

On April 29, 2013,Alibaba announced an investment of USD 586 million in Sina Weibo. Taobao and Sina agreed deep cooperation in various fields. On August 1, 2013, Alibaba launched Weibo for Taobao, which allows users to link Sina Weibo accounts with Taobao accounts.

Let’s talk about Jack Ma (Ma Yun).

Do you know Jack Ma failed his exam twice before? But now he is a very successful entrepreneur in China by conducting online business. Let’s understand Jack Ma in details.

Jack Ma born in Hangzhou,China. Eventually he attended Hangzhou’s Teacher’s Institute although he filed his exam twice before and he graduated in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in English. In 1995, Jack Ma founded China Yellowpages, widely believed to be China’s first Internet-based company. From 1998 to 1999, Ma headed an information technology company established by the Centre, a department of Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. He founded Alibaba.com in 1999, a China-based business-to-business marketplace site which currently serves more than 79 million members from more than 240 countries and territories. Jack Ma now works as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and he owns $3.4 billion USD (2012).

Achievement:

·         Year 2004: Jack Ma was chosen by China Central Television and its viewers as one of the “Top 10 Business Leaders of the Year”.

·         Year 2005: Jack Ma was selected by the World Economic Forum as a “Young Global Leader”.

^·          Year 2005: Jack Ma was named one of the “25 Most Powerful Businesspeople in Asia” by Fortune. He was selected by Businessweek as a “Businessperson of the Year”

·         Year 2007-2008: One of the 30 “World’s Best CEOs” by Barron’s.

·         Year 2009: Jack Ma was honored by Time magazine with inclusion into the Time 100 list of the world’s 100 most influential people. One of the“Top 10 Most Respected Entrepreneurs in China” by Forbes China in 2009. Ma received the “2009 CCTV Economic Person of the Year: Business Leaders of the Decade Award”.

·         Year 2010: Jack Ma was selected by Forbes Asia as one of “Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy” for his contribution to disaster relief and poverty.