Alibaba.com International, the over $4-billion Chinese e-commerce giant, has identified India as a major focus market for its expansion outside its home country. The internet company, part of the Alibaba Group, valued at around $50 billion, is one of the leading global e-commerce platforms for small businesses that currently has over 2.9 million users in India, which is 10% of its global membership.
?India is one of the biggest manufacturing hubs after China, and is proving to be a great growth market for us. India has become a major focus for Alibaba now,? Khalid Isar, country general manager, Alibaba.com International, told FE.
According to Isar, the company decided to expand its reach beyond the home market two years ago. India figures hugely in its game plan as most of the suppliers were acquainted with English, which is a natural advantage for the buyers of the European Union and the US. He also added that with labour cost increasing in China, India is proving to be a cost -ffective supplier.
The privately-held company now has five offices in India. ?We are helping SMEs get the benefit of a global market and exposing them to electronic commerce,? Isar noted. The website offers membership fees amounting to $2,999 per year, though there are free and verified memberships. But to take the next big plunge to enlarge the Indian supplier base, it is verifying users for free now.
The platform, which doesn?t have a consumer interface in India, is attracting a lot of members on account of the fact that it has more buyers than sellers, with the ratio being 70:30. India is already the largest supplier market outside mainland China for the platform. While most of the buyers are from the European Union and the US, most of the sellers are from the emerging economies. Isar added that company is just a platform and doesn?t track the transactions that happen through the website and would have no idea about the value of the transactions that happen on Alibaba.
?Ours is just a platform and we don?t intend to track the value of transactions or the financials of the suppliers on our site,? Isar said. He said the company is focussed on retaining the suppliers and not on revenues from India. But he declined to identify how many of the 2.9-million Indian members are subscribers and how many are free.The website is also one of the three most visited business websites according to Alexa, Isar added.
The biggest products sold on the website by the Indian suppliers included machineries, apparel, jewellery, spices and human hair. The Chinese buyers are largely buying cotton, spices and other raw materials from India.