Alibaba Group Holding will invest heavily in existing and new ventures abroad, making its push beyond the China market a top priority, the Chinese e-commerce leader's new CEO, Daniel Zhang, said.
Zhang's comments come at a time when Alibaba aims to maintain its rapid growth even as the prospect of e-commerce saturation at home looms over the company. "We must absolutely globalize," Zhang said in his first speech since taking up his new post this week, according to a report on Thursday on Alibaba's news and commentary website, Alizila.
The vast bulk of Alibaba's revenue comes from its dominant domestic online marketplaces, but the company has been investing in a range of sectors abroad. Just this week it announced it would set up a cloud computing base in Dubai, and boosted its stake in U.S. e-retailer Zulily Inc. "We will organize a global team and adopt global thinking to manage the business, and achieve the goal of 'global buy and global sell'," Zhang was quoted as saying.
Alibaba, which handles more transactions on its platforms than Amazon.com and eBay combined, would continue to invest heavily in new and existing overseas operations, Zhang was quoted as saying. Those included AliExpress, a platform for overseas consumers to buy Chinese goods, and Tmall Global, a marketplace for overseas goods to be sold online in China. Zhang said if Alibaba does not globalize it won't be able to last 100 years - a goal set out by Executive Chairman Jack Ma. But growth of Alibaba's international commerce business is lagging the pace of growth in China, even as the new CEO faces the prospect of slowing domestic growth as saturation among online shoppers threatens to hobble expansion.
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Research Associate at Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University
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