Alibaba Group also known as Alibaba.com, is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. It was founded on 28 June 1999. On 19 September 2014, Alibaba’s initial public offering on New York Stock Exchange raised $25 billion, giving the company a market value of US$231 billion and, by far, then the largest IPO in world history. It is one of the top 10 most valuable corporations, and is named the 31st-largest public company in the world on the Forbes Global 2000 2020 list. In January 2018, Alibaba became the second Asian company to break the $500 billion valuation mark, after its competitor Tencent. Alibaba also has the sixth-highest global brand valuation. It is one of the world’s largest retailers and e-commerce companies. In 2020, it was also rated as the fifth-largest artificial intelligence company. It is also one of the biggest venture capital firms, and one of the biggest investment corporations in the world. The company hosts the largest B2B, C2C, and B2C marketplaces in the world. It has also been expanding into the media industry, with revenues rising by triple percentage points yeaafter year.
Alibaba’s mission is to make it easy to do business everywhere. They enable businesses to transform the way they market, sell and operate and improve their efficiencies. They also provide the technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help merchants, brands and other businesses to leverage the power of new technology to engage with their users and customers and operate more efficiently. They aspire to make Alibaba the place where customers meet, work and live. As they continue to expand our businesses from commerce to cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, among other sectors, Alibaba has evolved into an ecosystem that is unique, energetic and innovative. It have set five-year goals to serve over 1 billion annual active consumers and achieve over 10 trillion Yuan in annual consumption through the China consumer business by the end of fiscal year 2024 as they continue on the path of globalization. Alibaba believes the five-year goals put them closer to achieving their vision for 2036: to serve 2 billion global consumers, enable 10 million businesses to become profitable and create 100 million jobs.
China’s 600 million-plus Internet users are migrating to smartphones, setting off a scramble among the country’s Internet giants. Alibaba’s toughest rival is Tencent, which runs the WeChat mobile messaging application, with 355 million users. The companies are spending billions of dollars to invest in businesses that can help them compete. Many brands say Alibaba’s site are rife with counterfeits. Alibaba says it spends millions of dollars a year battling fakes, and some merchants say Taobao has gotten faster at taking down suspect listings. These are some of the challenges that the Alibaba group is facing. But regardless, Alibaba is one of the most successful internet companies today.
