Alibaba's Secret to Bringing Asia to the World

Alibaba is positioning itself as one of the main connections for e-commerce in Japan, serving as a point of reference for customers and sellers between Asia and the rest of the world. By building a bridge between China, Japan and the American continent, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, also became one of the richest people in the world.

In May 2008, Alibaba announced its intentions to step up its operations in Japan — China's biggest trading partner — and launched Alibaba.com Japan. The formation was done in conjunction with Softbank, a large and diversified Japanese telecommunications and media corporation.

In doing so, Alibaba has opened the doors of the Japanese market to the rest of the world, allowing its customers to have access to all kinds of goods from Japan, from everyday items to the extravagant, and putting aside the differences between Japan and China. . Today, Alibaba is consolidated as one of the most successful companies in the world, after several years of hard work.

The secret of alibaba to bring asia to the world
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How did Alibaba become so big?

Jack Ma's success story is one of hard work and vision for the future, because after starting to earn money teaching English for US$14 a month, he became one of the richest men in the world. Jack Ma is reportedly the first to launch a commercial website in China.

In September 1995, chinapages.com, a directory of companies, goes live and after ten years, Jack Ma makes it one of the most successful Internet companies in China, and thus manages to enter the list of Forbes billionaires, by amass a fortune of US$39 billion in the span of 10 years according to Betway Casino (between his 35 and 45 years), and putting his name next to great personalities such as Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison, who also worked hard to build their path to success by globalizing their business.

In the case of Alibaba, Jack Ma decided to hire foreign experts to help the company go global. Alibaba's model was wisely anticipated on the market situation, as it was only after the year 2000 that Internet penetration in China started to become significant and also the total export volume was growing significantly.

The secret of alibaba to bring asia to the world
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To succeed internationally, Alibaba first had success in the Chinese domestic market, and in 2003, Alibaba launched Taobao, which is now the largest online shopping marketplace for consumers in China. After Taobao was created, it didn't take long before in 2005 it surpassed its US rival eBay as the leader in the consumer-consumer market in China. In addition, Alibaba launched Alimama, China's largest online advertising exchange platform, and Alipay, China's leading online payment service.

Alibaba's initial business model was simple; to facilitate a 24/7 meeting platform (working like an online Konbini) for suppliers and buyers worldwide. From the beginning, Alibaba not only connected Chinese suppliers with international buyers, but also aimed to connect all importers and exporters from all over the world. In doing so, it became the first global Internet company to emerge from China.

Despite skeptics and fierce competition, the global model in which buyers use the site for free and sellers pay has proved to be quite viable: currently, the Alibaba has more than 552 million users registered in over 200 countries and territories.

The secret of alibaba to bring asia to the world
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Unlike most other Internet companies, language was not a barrier for Alibaba. Its member base always communicated in English even before Alibaba hit the US market, so its non-English members were already used to communicating in a different language.

Alibaba basically works like a matchmaker and provides a cheap and efficient platform where sellers from all over the world – in practice, mainly China – can find suitable foreign buyers and vice versa.

The future of Alibaba

Alibaba is expanding its operations to markets beyond eCommerce, successfully investing in areas such as Cloud computing and services (Alibaba Cloud), Entertainment (AliMusic, Alibaba Pictures), Fintech and online payment platforms (Alipay), Artificial Intelligence (AliGenie) and even sports (AliSports), being the main sponsor of the FIFA Club World Cup from 2015 to 2022.

The secret of alibaba to bring asia to the world
image from scmp.com

Alibaba's vision for the future is to use its ecosystem (core business, cloud, logistics, entertainment and physical locations) to support the “New Five” strategy that empowers individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, farmers and businesses of all sizes. to do business globally. Jack Ma explains his idea of the “New Five” as New Retail, New Finance, New Manufactures, New Technologies and New Energies.

The implications for the future of Asian and China's economy and technologies as a leader in global free trade are enormous as Alibaba is shaping the future of eCommerce, global consumption and supply chains.

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