The successful completion of Alibaba Group’s listing on the New York stock exchange has placed the firm – and e-commerce in China more broadly – in the spotlight. Here are just-food’s top ten must-know facts on the Chinese e-tail behemoth.
- Alibaba Group’s IPO is the biggest ever listing on the US SEC. The issue price of US$68 per share saw the group raise $25bn, making it the largest ever global listing.
- Alibaba founder Jack Ma, vice chairman Joseph Tsai and Yahoo all remain significant stakeholders in the firm.
- Alibaba operates a range of sites:
- Taobao Marketplace – China’s largest online shopping destination which is C2C and B2C focused and can be accessed by international branded manufacturers as well as Chinese sellers.
- Tmall – China’s largest third-party platform for brands and retailers.
- Juhuasuan -China’s most popular “group buying” marketplace.
- Alibaba.com – China’s largest online global wholesale marketplace.
- AliExpress – enables Chinese and global brands to access global consumers.
- Alibaba’s sites account for 60% of the packages delivered in China and the company handles around 80% of China’s e-commerce.
- For the year to end-June 2013 Alibaba reported 279m active buyers on an annualised basis, up from 185m in the prior year. With an average of 52 transactions each per year, these buyers made 14.5bn orders to the value of $296bn.
- In 2013, Alibaba handled a daily average of 16.6m packages. During the firm’s 2013 Singles Day promotion this increased to 156m packages.
- Alibaba has said it is focused on meeting the growing demand from mobile orders. In the three months ended 30 June, the company revealed that purchases made via mobiles accounted for 1.5% of gross merchandise volume, up from 0.58% in the comparable year-ago period. The company accounts for 81.6% of total mobile retail volumes in China.
- Alibaba has 2.8m online supplier “store fronts” and more than 5,900 product categories.
- While Alibaba is China’s largest online retailer, its competitive set includes the likes of Wal-Mart owned Yihaodian, JD.com and SF Express owned Shunfeng First Choice.
- Alibaba’s cross-border strategy is focused on leveraging international links that allow foreign brands to access Chinese consumers and Chinese merchants to access global markets “without significant capital expenditure”.
For just-food’s analysis of the opportunity presented by e-commerce for CPG companies in China, click here.
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