Alibaba.com is in talks with its India business partner, Infomedia 18 Ltd, and others to open a joint venture company in India.
Alibaba.com CEO David Wei said, ?Our strategy is to have a joint partnership with majority equity holding in every country where we want to have focused operations. India is the most important market after China for us.? According to Wei, Alibaba.com cannot miss four countries, China, the US, Japan, and India. Now India is behind all these countries. China leads in both supply and buying side. Majority of Indian members are suppliers. By 2010 the two countries would be the leading suppliers to the world market. With the increasing buying power of the Chinese and Indians, by 2020 they will be the leading buying side also.
The proposed JV would help Indian exporters to sell to the world. ?We will also help Indian business to trade domestically, export to China and create facilities for online payment,? he added.
The biggest challenge for this expansion would be broadband, he added. Broadband penetration is low in India now. Without broadband e-commerce is not possible. With due permissions, Alibaba would make use of the mobile applications also in B2b operations. ?We want to spend on training. One of the core operations of the proposed JV would be to set up training and service centres across India to assist the SMEs in operating on the Alibaba platform,? he said. Wei said the plan is to invest more than 50% of the revenues in India. ?India will be one of the few countries where Alibaba.com will not have any limit in investment. If there is need we will continue to invest,? he said.
?(Travel for this story was sponsored by Alibaba.com)