Founded on 4 April 1999 in Hangzhou city of China, Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a multinational e-commerce company. Apart from its business of daily required commodities, it also deals in various other services, like the internet, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, electronic payment, and other such life-changing technologies. Through its official website www.alibaba.com, it provides business-to-business and consumer-to-consumer services.
Journey
Jack Ma and 17 other co-founders launched the first online market of Alibaba in the last month of 1999. By the end of 2000, Alibaba had earned $25 million and went on to achieve the state of financial gain in December 2001. An e-commerce platform named Taobao was founded in May 2003.
By the end of 2004, a service company of the Taobao called “Alipay” parted itself and became a separate company. In October 2005, the operation of Yahoo! China was taken over by the Alibaba group, and the group developed a partnership with Yahoo! Inc. In the month of November in 2007, Alibaba.com was included on “The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited.”
In April 2008, a retail website of Taobao (Tmall.com) called Taobao Mall was founded to provide consumer-to-consumer type business to people. In September 2008, the Research and Development Institute of Alibaba group was founded, and in the same year in the month of December, Alibaba declared that all websites related to Alibaba group would be free on 1st January 2009.
In September 2009, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, Alibaba extended its business to the cloud computing field. In the mid of 2010, Alibaba announced that it would spend 0.3% of its total yearly revenue on environmental protection. In July 2011, the first mobile OS made by the Cloud Computing group of Alibaba (Aliyun OS) was launched. At the beginning of 2012, the Chinese name of Tmall.com was changed for re-branding purposes.
In September 2013, after a deal with the Hong Kong regulators was not completed, Alibaba asked for an “Initial Public Offering” (IPO) in the US and on 6 May 2014, the group was registered to go public in the United States, as one of the biggest IPO of US history. On 5 June 2014, the group bought a 50% share in the”Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club.” On 30 March 2015, the co-founder of Alibaba group Jack Ma met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the expansion of his business in India.
Alibaba group entered the Indian e-commerce business scene by buying a 25% share of “One97” (a firm owned by Paytm). On 11 November 2015, on the occasion of Singles’ Day in China, the total sale of the Alibaba group was over $14.32 billion (a jump of 60% as compared to 2014).
In August 2015, the group became a major investor in “Snapdeal.” On 9 June 2016, the Alibaba group, in partnership with SAIC, launched its first “Internet Car” called Roewe RX5. In September 2017, Alibaba’s “Alipay” launched a face detection technology, which enabled its customers to pay only through a smile. In March 2018, Alibaba became a partner of Renault (an automobile manufacturing company of France).
Awards & Achievement
Today Alibaba is named among the top 10 biggest and most valuable companies in the world. Fortune magazine has reported Alibaba as one of the most liked companies in the world. In 2015, Alibaba’s profit in its online sector was larger than the combined profit of all other US retail companies, including Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. Alibaba has been the largest retailer of the world since April 2016.
In July 2017, Alibaba was announced to be the first company of Asia to cross the $400 billion value mark. On 11 November 2017, on the occasion of Singles’ day in China, its sale was over $25.4 billion. Recent news shows that the revenue growth rate per year of Alibaba has been in 3 digits, which has allowed it to cross the revenue growth rate of major companies, like Google and Microsoft.
Net Worth of Alibaba
As of April 2024, the estimated net worth of Alibaba group is $500 billion.
Alibaba group has today become a giant e-commerce company functioning worldwide. However, the start was not as big, and it had its own humble beginnings. It started as a small online firm in China developed by Jack Ma and his 17 other partners. It’s the hard work and the business mind of all its founders and CEOs, which has catapulted this company name to the top 10 largest companies in the world.