Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Chinese: 阿里巴巴集团控股有é™å…¬å¸; pinyin: Ä€lÇbÄbÄ JÃtuán KònggÇ" YÇ'uxià n GÅngsÄ«) is a Chinese e-commerce company that provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals. It also provides electronic payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. The group began in 1999 when Jack Ma founded the website Alibaba.com, a business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. In 2012, two of Alibaba's portals handled 1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in sales. Suppliers from other countries are supported (with more stringent checks than for Chinese companies), but the company primarily operates in the People's Republic of China (PRC). At closing time on the date of its initial public offering (IPO), 19 September 2014, Alibaba's market value was US$231 billion. However, the stock has traded down and market cap was about $212 billion at the end of December 2015.
It is the world's largest retailer as of April 2016 surpassing Walmart, with operations in over 200 countries, as well as one of the largest Internet companies. Alibaba has been generating more gross merchandise volume (GMV) than Amazon and eBay combined. Its online sales and profits surpassed all US retailers (including Walmart, Amazon and eBay) combined since 2015. It has been expanding into media and entertainment industry, with revenues rising 3-digit percents year on year.
In May 2017, Alibaba's market cap grew to USD$305 billion, after Tencent achieved the feat. At the same period, Alibaba also became one of the world's top 10 most valuable companies. On 8 June 2017, Alibaba's market cap to grew to USD$360 billion. The company also reported sales growth forecast which topped every analyst's estimate, while at the same time surpassing Tencent to become Asia's most valuable company.
History
Founding and name
The company's name came from the character Ali Baba from the Arabic literature One Thousand and One Nights because of its universal appeal. as Ma explained:
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?", and she said, "Open Sesame". And I said, "Yes, this is the name!" Then I went on to 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 â€" 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!"
Brick and mortar stores
According to Li Chuan, a senior executive at Alibaba, the company was planning in 2013 to open traditional brick and mortar retail outlets in partnership with Chinese real estate company Dalian Wanda Group. Additionally, Alibaba purchased a 25% stake in Hong Kong-based Intime Retail in early 2014. In early 2017, Alibaba and Intime's founder Shen Guojun agreed to pay as much as 19.8 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$2.6 billion) to take the store chain private. Alibaba's stakeâ€"28% from 2014's US$692 million investmentâ€"would rise to about 74% after the deal.
IPO
On 5 September 2014, the groupâ€"in a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commissionâ€"set a US$60- to $66- per-share price range for its scheduled initial public offering (IPO), the final price of which would be determined after an international roadshow to gauge the investor interest in Alibaba shares to shareholders.
On 18 September 2014, Alibaba's IPO priced at US$68, raising US$21.8Â billion for the company and investors. Alibaba was the biggest US IPO in history. On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's shares (BABA) began trading on the NYSE at an opening price of $92.70 at 11:55Â am EST. On 22 September 2014, Alibaba's underwriters announced their confirmation that they had exercised a greenshoe option to sell 15% more shares than originally planned, boosting the total amount of the IPO to $25Â billion.
Company timeline
In December 1999, Hector Ma and 17 other founders released their first online marketplace, named "Alibaba Online". From 1999 to 2000, Alibaba Group raised a total of US$25Â Million from SoftBank, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and some other institutions. In December 2001, Alibaba.com achieved profitability. In May 2003, Taobao was founded as a consumer e-commerce platform. In December 2004, Alipay, which started as a service on the Taobao platform, became a separate business. In October 2005, Alibaba Group took over the operation of China Yahoo! as part of its strategic partnership with Yahoo! Inc.
In November 2007, Alibaba.com successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In April 2008, Taobao established Taobao Mall (Tmall.com), a retail website, to complement its C2C marketplace. In September 2008, Alibaba Group R&D Institute was established. In December 2008, Alibaba.com Corporation announced that all Alibaba group websites will be shark fin-free on 1 January 2009.
In 2009, global growth equity firm General Atlantic invests $75M, led by the firm's head of global internet and technology sector, Anton Levy. In September 2009, Alibaba Group established Alibaba Cloud Computing in conjunction with its 10-year anniversary. In May 2010, Alibaba Group announced a plan to earmark 0.3% of its annual revenues to fund environmental protection initiatives. In October 2010, Taobao beta-launched eTao as a shopping search engine.
In June 2011, Alibaba Group reorganised Taobao into three separate companies: Taobao Marketplace, Taobao Mall (Tmall.com) and eTao. In July 2011, Alibaba Cloud Computing launched its first self-developed mobile operating system, Aliyun OS over K-Touch Cloud Smartphone. In January 2012, Tmall.com changed its Chinese name as part of a rebranding exercise. In May 2012 Alibaba Group decides to reverse course and take its publicly traded Alibaba.com private, delisting from the Hong Kong stock exchange at close to 13.50 Hong Kong dollars per share.
In September 2013, the company sought an IPO in the United States after a deal could not be reached with Hong Kong regulators. Planning took over 12 months before the company's market début in September 2014, with Reuters Instrument Code "BABA.N". The pricing of the IPO initially raised US$21.8 billion, which later increased to US$25 billion, making it the largest IPO in history. Buyers were actually purchasing shares in a Cayman Islands shell corporation, not in the Alibaba group, as China forbids foreign ownership of its companies.
In September 2013, Alibaba denies ditching HK for IPO after the Hong Kong Exchange refuses to allow the company to list shares. The company "sought to create a partnership structure that effectively would give preferential treatment to one class of shareholders over another. Hong Kong listing rules have long prohibited companies from issuing dual-class shares with different voting rights." The proposal would have allowed the company’s founder, Jack Ma and his partners to be able to nominate a majority of the members of the board and retain control of the company even if it issued new shares.
In September 2013, Embroiled in somewhat of a controversy, Alibaba Group denies abandoning Hong Kong in favor of a U.S. IPO, because of Hong Kong Exchange's refusal to allow a dual class share structure. In March 2014, Alibaba group said it will begin the process of filing for an initial public offering in the US Prior to its IPO filing on Form F-1 as a foreign issuer in the US, Alibaba undertook an aggressive acquisition spree â€" previously atypical for the company â€" acquiring numerous majority and minority stakes in companies including micro-blogging service Weibo, China Vision Holdings, and car sharing service Lyft, as well as smart remote app developer Peel Technologies. On 6 May 2014, Alibaba Group filed registration documents to go public in the US in what may be one of the biggest initial public offerings in American history. On 5 June 2014, Alibaba group agreed to take a 50 percent stake in Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club, winners of the 2013 AFC Champions League, for 1.2 billion yuan ($192 million). In June 2014, Alibaba acquired the Chinese mobile internet firm UCWeb. The price of the purchase has not been disclosed but the company did claim that the acquisition creates the biggest merger in the history of China's internet sector.
Alibaba's consumer-to-consumer portal Taobao and business-to-consumer portal Tmall, each features nearly a billion products and both are among the 20 most-visited websites globally. The Group's websites accounted for over 60% of the parcels delivered in China by March 2013, and 80% of the nation's online sales by September 2014. Alipay, an online payment escrow service, accounts for roughly half of all online payment transactions within China.
On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's shares (BABA) began trading on the NYSE. On 2 February 2015, Alibaba announces that it has acquired a $590m minority stake in the Chinese smartphone maker Meizu. On 30 March 2015, Jack Ma met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discussed Alibaba Group's plan to help small businesses in India. Alibaba reported sales of $14.32Â billion on China's Singles' Day on 11 November 2015, up 60 percent from 2014, In November 2016, the e-commerce giant Alibaba set Singles Day records and generated 120.7 billion CNY (17.79 billion USD) in gross merchandise. Alibaba entered India's e-commerce space with 25% stake in Paytm owner One97. In August 2015, Alibaba Group invested in Snapdeal.
In September 2015, Alibaba Group along with Ant Financial invested about $680 Million in the Indian e-commerce company Paytm. On 11 December 2015, Alibaba buys South China Morning Post and other media assets of SCMP Group for US$266 million. On 31 December 2015, Alibaba buys 33 million shares of Groupon, corresponding to 5.6 per cent stake. On 2 March 2016, Alibaba struck a deal with media agency Oceans Sport and Entertainment to bring Ocean's non-gambling game Match Poker to China. In April 2016, Alibaba announced that it intended to acquire a controlling interest in the privately held Lazada Group, the "Amazon of Southeast Asia", by paying $500 million for new shares and buying $500M worth of shares from existing investors.
On 9 June 2016, Alibaba officially unveiled the Roewe RX5, its first "internet car" in collaboration with SAIC. The RX5 is available for pre-order. It is priced upwards of RMB 148,800 (US$22,300) with deliveries will be scheduled to start in August 2016. Ma believes that "in the future that 80 percent of the car's functionality won’t be related to transportation. The car will become a kind of robot you communicate with on a daily basis." In a speech in Bangkok in October 2016, Ma claimed that Alibaba Group has created more than 30 million jobs in China. In a meeting between Donald Trump and Jack Ma at the beginning of January 2017 they discussed the creation of one million jobs in the United States.
As of February 2017, the company has been engaging and dealing with counterfeit issues and accused agencies for filing fake counterfeit claims.
Companies and affiliated entities
Alibaba.com
Alibaba.com, the primary company of Alibaba, is the world's largest online business-to-business trading platform for small businesses. Founded in Hangzhou in eastern China, Alibaba.com has three main services. The company's English language portal Alibaba.com handles sales between importers and exporters from more than 240 countries and regions. The Chinese portal 1688.com was developed for domestic business-to-business trade in China. In addition, Alibaba.com offers a transaction-based retail website, AliExpress.com, which allows smaller buyers to buy small quantities of goods at wholesale prices.
Alibaba.com went public at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, and was delisted again in 2012.
In 2013, 1688.com launched a direct channel that is responsible for $30Â million in daily transaction value.
AutoNavi is a Chinese map supplier. It has been acquired by Alibaba in 2014.
Taobao
Taobao Marketplace, or Taobao, is China's largest consumer-to-consumer online shopping platform. Founded in 2003, it offers a variety of products for retail sale. In January 2015 it was the second most visited web site in China, according to Alexa.com. Taobao's growth was attributed to offering free registration and commission-free transactions using a free third-party payment platform.
Advertising makes up 85 percent of the company's total revenue, allowing it to break even in 2009. Taobao's 2010 profit was estimated to be 1.5Â billion yuan (US$235.7Â million), only about 0.4 percent of their total sales figure of 400Â billion yuan (US$62.9Â billion) that year, way below the industry average of 2 percent, according to iResearch estimates.
According to Zhang Yu, the director of Taobao, the number of stores on Taobao with annual sales under 100Â thousand yuan increased by 60% between 2011 and 2013. Over the same period, the number of stores with sales between 10Â thousand and 1Â million yuan increased by 30%, and the number of stores with sales over 1Â million yuan increased by 33%. Taobao's total sales (including Tmall) exceeded 1Â trillion yuan (USD 160Â billion) in 2012. And on 11 November 2012, the biggest online shopping promotion activity, Taobao accomplished 19.1Â billion yuan (USD 3.07Â billion) sales in one day.
Also, there are other parts of Taobao. Tmall.com was introduced in April 2008 as an online retail platform to complement the Taobao consumer-to-consumer portal and became a separate business in June 2011. As of October 2013 it was the eighth most visited web site in China, offering global brands to an increasingly affluent Chinese consumer base. In addition, there is Juhuasuan, a group shopping website in China. It was launched by Taobao in March 2010 and became a separate business in October 2011. Juhuasuan offers "flash sales", products that are available only for a fixed time period, which can last from one or two days to a full month. To buy at the discounted price, buyers must purchase the item within that defined time. Plus, Taobao launched a service known as eTao. eTao was beta-launched by Taobao in October 2010 as a comparison shopping website, and became a separate business in June 2011. It offers search results from most Chinese online shopping platforms, including product searches, sales and coupon searches. Online shoppers can use the site to compare prices from different sellers and identify products to buy. According to the Alibaba Group web site, eTao offers products from Amazon China, Dangdang, Gome, Yihaodian, Nike China and Vancl, as well as Taobao and Tmall.
Alipay
Launched in 2004, Alipay is a third-party online payment platform with no transaction fees. It also provides an escrow service, in which buyers can verify whether they are happy with goods they have bought before releasing money to the seller. In addition, Ant Financial, another Alibaba company, has operated Alipay payments services since 2004. Alibaba Group spun off Alipay in 2010 in a controversial move. According to analyst research report, Alipay has the biggest market share in China with 300 million users and control of just under half of China's online payment market in February 2014. In 2013, Alipay launched a financial product platform called Yu'ebao (ä½™é¢å®). In 2015, Alibaba announced that they will introduce a system that can be paid by recognizing the owner's face.
Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun)
Alibaba Cloud aims to build a cloud computing service platform, including e-commerce data mining e-commerce data processing, and data customisation. It was established in September 2009 in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Alibaba Group. It has R&D centres and operators in Hangzhou, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Silicon Valley and Dubai. In July 2014, Alibaba Cloud entered into a partnership deal with Inspur. Alibaba Cloud is the largest high-end cloud computing company in China. In 2009, Alibaba acquired HiChina, the largest domain registration service and web hosting service company in China, and built it into Alibaba Cloud.
AliExpress
Launched in 2010, AliExpress.com is an online retail service made up of mostly small Chinese businesses offering products to international online buyers. It is the most visited e-commerce website in Russia. It allows small businesses in China to sell to customers all over the world, and, just like Amazon, you can find just about anything there. It might be more accurate to compare AliExpress to eBay, though, as sellers are independent; it simply serves as a host for other businesses to sell to consumers. Similar to eBay, sellers on Aliexpress can be either companies or individuals. It connects directly Chinese businesses with buyers. The main difference from Taobao is that it´s aimed primarily at international buyers. Mainly in USA, Russia, Brazil or Spain.
Yahoo! China
Yahoo! China was launched on September 24, 1999. In October 2005, Alibaba Group formed a strategic partnership with Yahoo! and acquired China Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com.cn), a Chinese portal that focuses on Internet services like news, email, and search. In April 2013, Alibaba Group announced that, as part of the agreement to buy back the Yahoo! Mail stake, technological support for China Yahoo! Mail service would be suspended and the China Yahoo! Mail account migration would begin. Several options were offered to users to make the transition as smooth as possible, and China Yahoo! users had four months to migrate their accounts to the Aliyun mail service, the Yahoo! Mail service in the United States, or to another third-party e-mail provider of the user's choice. Yahoo! China closed its mail service on 19 August 2013. E-mails sent to Yahoo! China accounts could be forwarded to an Alimail box until 31 December 2014. Users were also allowed to transfer e-mail accounts to yahoo.com or any other e-mail service. It is estimated there are no more than a million users with Yahoo! Mail for China and chances are they also own other e-mail accounts.
Aliwangwang
In 2004, the company released its own instant messaging software service Aliwangwang for interactions between customer and online sellers. By 2014 Aliwangwang user has reached 50 million, making it the second largest instant messaging tool in China.
Laiwang
In October 2013, the company's chairman Jack Ma announced that the company would no longer use Tencent's messaging application WeChat, and would henceforth promote its own messaging application and service, Laiwang.
Alibaba Pictures
In March 2014, Alibaba agreed to acquire a controlling stake in ChinaVision Media Group for $804Â million. The two firms announced they would establish a strategic committee for potential future opportunities in online entertainment and other media areas. The company was renamed Alibaba Pictures Group.
Youku Tudou
In April 2014, Alibaba and Yunfeng Capital, a private equity company controlled by Alibaba's founder, Jack Ma, agreed to acquire a combined 18.5 percent stake in Youku Tudou, which broadcasts a series of popular television programs and other videos over the Internet.
11 Main
On 11 June 2014, Alibaba launched US shopping site 11 Main. The 11 Main marketplace hosts more than 1,000 merchants in categories such as clothing, fashion accessories and jewellery as well as interior goods and arts and crafts and it plans to keep adding more, the company said. On 23 June 2015, Alibaba announced that it is selling 11 Main to OpenSky, an online-marketplace operator based in New York.
South China Morning Post
In December 2015, Alibaba agreed to a deal to acquire the South China Morning Post and other media assets belonging to the group for a consideration of $266 million. Although Alibaba promised editorial independence, vice-chairman Joseph Tsai said that Alibaba believes that "the world needs a plurality of views when it comes to China coverage. China's rise as an economic power and its importance to world stability is too important for there to be a singular thesis." The acquisition attracted media concerns over what this would mean for the newspaper’s coverage.
Ali Health
Alibaba's flagship health-care unit. Ali Health was launched in 2014 when Alibaba and Yunfeng Capital, a private equity firm, bought a 54% stake in Citic 21CN. It positions itself as a pharmaceutical e-commerce business and medical services. In April 2015, the group also reached an agreement to transfer its online B2C pharmacy, Tmall Medical (yao.Tmall.com), to Ali Health. The integration provides consumers the widest range of pharmaceutical and health products available in China.
UCWeb
UCWeb is a Chinese leading provider of mobile internet software technology and services. Since its inception in 2004, UCWeb's mission has been to provide better mobile internet experience to billions of users around the world. Its international product portfolio includes a mobile browsing service (UC Browser), app and game distribution platforms (9Apps and 9Game), a mobile traffic platform (UC Union) among others.
Lazada
Lazada Group is a Singaporean e-commerce company founded by Rocket Internet in 2011. Lazada operates sites in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its sites launched in March 2012, with a business model of selling inventory to customers from its own warehouses. In 2013 it added a marketplace model that allowed third-party retailers to sell their products through Lazada's site. Lazada features a wide product offering in categories ranging from consumer electronics to household goods, toys, fashion and sports equipment. In April 2016, Alibaba Group announced that it intended to acquire a controlling interest in Lazada by paying $500 million for new shares and buying $500M worth of shares from existing investors.
Corporate governance
Jack Ma was Alibaba Group's chief executive officer for its first 10 years, but stepped down as CEO on 10 May 2013, becoming executive chairman. Jonathan Lu became the company's new CEO. On 10 May 2015 Daniel Zhang replaced Lu as CEO.
Controversies
Gold Supplier membership
Alibaba.com offers a paid Gold Supplier membership to try to ensure that each seller is genuine; sellers' Gold Supplier status and the number of years it has been held are displayed. The supplier verification types and checks are listed on Alibaba.com's Web site, with more stringent checks for sellers outside China. While the majority of suppliers are reported to be genuine, there have been many cases of sellers, some with Gold Supplier status, seeking to defraud unsuspecting buyers. In February 2011, controversy ensued when Alibaba's corporate office admitted that it had granted the mark of integrity of its "China Gold Supplier" program to more than 2,000 dealers that had subsequently defrauded buyers; the firm's share price dropped "abruptly" after the announcement. A statement from the firm reported that Yan Limin, the general manager of Alibaba.com at the time, had been dismissed in March for "misconduct"; Phil Muncaster of UK's The Register additionally reported that "a further 28 employees had been involved in dodgy dealings".
As the Economist noted, the company's response has conflicting components: Alibaba's promulgated view that its corrective actions indicate its commitment to quality and integrity (where it contrasts itself with other scandal-associated Chinese business sectors), versus a damage control view suggesting that the subscription-driven, third-party verified "China Gold Supplier" program was endangered by diminished trust in its endorsement system, removing the incentive for global buyers to choose Alibaba as their business-to-business service, thus more broadly endangering Alibaba through impact on its brand and capabilities (the latter via the "defenestration of senior people"). The scandal is said to have placed the head of Alibaba Group, Jack Maâ€"who is described as having been furious over the scandalâ€"in a position to personally fight to win back trust.
Uranium sales
In May 2012, a US law enforcement agent posing as an American broker representing persons in Iran posted an advertisement on Alibaba.com seeking to purchase uranium. In August 2013, Patrick Campbell of Sierra Leone was arrested at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Samples of raw uranium ore were allegedly found concealed in the soles of his shoes. Campbell was accused of seeking to arrange the export of 1,000 tonnes of yellowcake from Sierra Leone to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, packed in drums and disguised as the mineral chromite. It was later determined that the samples contained an insignificant amount of uranium, and Campbell was acquitted at trial.
Counterfeit items and scams
Alibaba is frequently associated with fraudulent import of counterfeit items: in 2016, the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative added Taobao back onto a list of notorious counterfeit platforms that includes the likes of torrent site Pirate Bay.
AliExpress is even more controversial: despite claiming to provide buyer protection, it frequently refuses to reimburse customers when goods are seized by customs or when sellers who establish fake business entities vanish after their scam. Several hundred lawsuits and class actions have been filed in the US.
Alibaba denied wrongdoing and started timid action against counterfeiters with only 2 lawsuits filed as of January 4, 2017, but brands suffering from the counterfeit products continue to blame Alibaba for not doing what it takes to fight the issue
See also
- JD.com, main competitor to Alibaba's Tmall
References
External links
- Official website
