Alibaba Group Holding Limited
NYSE:BABA
$ 72.13
+ $1.31 (1.78%)
$ 72.13
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Real-time: 03/22/2024 15:59

Alibaba Group Holding Stock

About Alibaba Group Holding

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Alibaba or Alibaba Group) provides the technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help merchants, brands, retailers and other businesses to leverage the power of new technology to engage with their users and customers and operate in a more efficient way. Alibaba Group Holding share price history

The company also empowers enterprises with its leading cloud infrastructure and services and enhanced work collaboration capabilities to facilitate their digital transformation and to support the growth of their businesses. The company’s businesses are consisted of China (the PRC or to the People’s Republic of China) commerce, International commerce, Local consumer services, Cainiao, Cloud, Digital media and entertainment, and Innovation initiatives and others. An ecosystem has developed around its platforms and businesses that consists of consumers, merchants, brands, retailers, third-party service providers, strategic alliance partners and other businesses. For the year ended March 31, 2022, the company served approximately 1.31 billion annual active consumers through its global consumer-facing businesses in the Alibaba Ecosystem, including over 1 billion in China and 305 million consumers outside China. The company also serves millions of enterprises through its Cloud business, and many of its customers are reputable industry leaders in their respective verticals.

China Commerce

China Commerce Retail

The company is the largest retail commerce business in the world in terms of GMV in the twelve months ended March 31, 2022. The company’s China commerce retail businesses primarily include Taobao and Tmall, which together constitute the world’s largest digital retail business in terms of GMV for the twelve months ended March 31, 2022, Taobao Deals, which offers consumers value-for-money products, Taocaicai which provides next-day pick-up services for groceries and fresh goods at neighborhood pick-up points, as well as its direct sales businesses which offer upgraded consumer experiences with integrated online and offline capabilities, including Tmall Supermarket, Freshippo and Sun Art. During the same period, the company generated approximately 67% of its revenue from retail commerce business in China.

The company has also developed a digital commerce infrastructure that offers an upgraded consumer experience by seamlessly integrating online and offline capabilities for its marketplaces and direct sales businesses. Leveraging the company’s product and supply chain capabilities, as well as fulfillment and delivery expertise, its consumers can enjoy a broad variety of quality products at with a wide selection of delivery options that satisfy their varying needs. Alibaba Group Holding share price history

China Commerce Wholesale

1688.com, China’s largest integrated domestic wholesale marketplace (1688.com and Alibaba.com, collectively) in 2021 by net revenue, according to Analysys, connects wholesale buyers and sellers across a wide range of categories.

International Commerce

International Commerce Retail

The company’s International commerce retail businesses, including Lazada, AliExpress, Trendyol and Daraz, empower brands and merchants with local market insights and critical commerce infrastructure, in turn serving local consumers through wide product selection and differentiated customer experience. Lazada, a leading and fast-growing e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, serves one of the largest user bases among the global e-commerce platforms by providing consumers with access to a broad range of offerings from local SMEs, and regional and global brands. Additionally, Lazada operates one of the leading e-commerce logistics networks in Southeast Asia, which provides reliable, quality and convenient logistics services to its consumers and merchants. AliExpress, one of the company’s international retail marketplaces, enables global consumers to buy directly from manufacturers and distributors in China and around the world. The company also operates Trendyol, which is by far the leading e-commerce platform in Türkiye in terms of both GMV and order volume in 2021. It serves local consumers with a broad selection of products and services through its e-commerce business, as well as instant delivery services for food and groceries. Consumers also enjoy the quality and convenient delivery services provided by Trendyol’s fulfillment and logistics networks. Beyond Türkiye, Trendyol has expanded internationally by leveraging its product sourcing capabilities and supply chain advantages in Türkiye. In addition, the company operates Daraz, a leading e-commerce platform across South Asia with key markets in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

International Commerce Wholesale

The company operates Alibaba.com, China’s largest integrated international online wholesale marketplace in 2021. During fiscal year 2022, buyers who sourced business opportunities or completed transactions on Alibaba.com were located across over 190 countries.

Local Consumer Services

The company uses mobile and online technology to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and convenience of consumer services for both service providers and their customers in two distinct scenarios: To-Home and To-Destination.

The company’s To-Home businesses, including Ele.me (Rajax Holding, a company incorporated under the laws of the Cayman Islands and its consolidated subsidiary) and Taoxianda, enable consumers to easily access merchants’ services at home. Ele.me, a leading local services and on-demand delivery platform, enables consumers to order food and beverages, groceries, FMCG, flowers and pharmaceutical products anytime and anywhere. Taoxianda, the company’s online-offline integration service solution for FMCG brands and third-party grocery retail partners, facilitates the digitalization of retailers’ operations, helps them open online stores and provides customized marketing recommendations.

The company’s To-Destination businesses, including Amap, Fliggy and Koubei, provide consumers with convenient access to quality services at their destinations. Amap, a leading provider of mobile digital map, navigation and real-time traffic information in China, provides users with a simple one-stop access point to services, such as navigation, local services and ride-hailing. Fliggy, a leading online travel platform, provides comprehensive services to meet consumers’ travel needs. Koubei, the company’s restaurant and local services guide platform for in-store consumption, provides merchants with targeted marketing solutions, digital operation capabilities and analytics tools and allows consumers to discover local services content on the platform.

Cainiao

Leveraging the company’s self-developed and its logistics partners’ capacities and capabilities, Cainiao offers domestic and international one-stop-shop logistics services and supply chain management solutions, addressing various logistics needs of merchants and consumers at scale. Cainiao also uses data insights and technology to digitalize the entire logistics process and enhance the capabilities of the company’s logistics partners, thereby improving consumer experience and efficiency across the logistics value chain. For consumers, Cainiao offers parcel pick-up services through Cainiao Post, the company’s neighborhood logistics solution that operates a network of neighborhood, campus and rural village stations and residential self pick-up lockers. Consumers can also enjoy parcel pick-up at the doorstep and time-guaranteed delivery service through Cainiao. For merchants, Cainiao has built a full-fledged fulfillment network at provincial, city, and county levels in China, which offers customized fulfillment solutions to different types of merchants on the company’s platforms. Globally, Cainiao has developed a network of assets and partners to support merchants on its cross-border and international commerce retail platforms such as AliExpress, Tmall Global and Lazada.

Cloud

The company’s Cloud segment is consisted of Alibaba Cloud and DingTalk. Alibaba Group is the world’s third largest and Asia Pacific’s largest Infrastructure-as-a-service provider. Alibaba Group is also China’s largest provider of public cloud services by revenue in 2021, including PaaS and IaaS services. Alibaba Cloud offers a complete suite of cloud services, including proprietary servers, elastic computing, storage, network, security, database and big data, and IoT services, serving the company’s ecosystem and beyond. The company leverages these capabilities and technologies to provide its customers across various verticals with industry-specific solutions, enabling intelligent business decisions and operations. In addition, the company offers Alibaba Cloud’s enterprise customers a number of DingTalk’s solutions to empower them with enhanced work collaboration capabilities and easy access to Alibaba Cloud’s big data analytics and AI capabilities, further facilitating their digital transformation. The company’s cloud services’ added value translates into direct and tangible results, and these services has become a critical foundation for its customers, many of whom are reputable industry leaders in their respective verticals. DingTalk is the company’s digital collaboration workplace and application development platform that offers new ways of working, sharing and collaboration for modern enterprises and organizations. Equipped with the company’s cloud capabilities and big data analytics, DingTalk aims to facilitate the digital transformation of enterprises and organizations. Millions of enterprises and users use DingTalk to stay connected and work remotely.

Digital Media and Entertainment

Digital media and entertainment is a natural extension of the company’s strategy to capture consumption beyond its commerce businesses. Insights the company gains from its commerce businesses and its proprietary data technology enable it to deliver relevant digital media and entertainment content to consumers. This synergy delivers a superior entertainment experience, increases customer loyalty and improves monetization for content providers across the ecosystem.

Youku (Youku Tudou Inc.), the third largest online long-form video platform in China in terms of monthly active users in March 2022, and serves as one of the company’s key distribution platforms for digital media and entertainment content. Quark, its one-stop platform for information search, storage and consumption, helps young users gain access to a variety of digital content and information for learning and work purposes. In addition, Alibaba Pictures Group Limited (Alibaba Pictures), driven by high-quality content and technology, is an integrated platform that provides content production, promotion and distribution, intellectual property-related licensing and commercial operation, cinema ticketing management and Internet data services for the entertainment industry. Youku, Quark, Alibaba Pictures and the company’s other platforms, such as newsfeed and literature platforms, allow users to discover and consume content, as well as interact with each other. In addition, the company develops, operates and distributes mobile games through Lingxi Games.

Innovation Initiatives and Others

The company continues to innovate and develop new service and product offerings with the goals of meeting the needs of its customers, improving efficiency in their daily lives and creating synergies among its ecosystem participants. DAMO Academy, the company’s global research program in cutting-edge technologies, aims to integrate and speed up knowledge exchange between science and industry. DAMO Academy encourages a collaborative environment that facilitates the application of scientific discoveries to real-life circumstances. Tmall Genie smart speaker, a leading smart speaker in China, provides an interactive interface for the company’s customers to easily access services offered by its ecosystem participants.

Ecosystem

An ecosystem has developed around the company’s platforms and businesses, consisting of consumers, merchants, brands, retailers, third-party service providers, strategic alliance partners and other businesses. At the nexus of this ecosystem are its technology platform, the company’s marketplace rules and the role it plays in connecting these participants to make it possible for them to discover, engage and transact with each other and manage their businesses anytime and anywhere.

Strategies

The company strives to empower its customers and ecosystem partners with powerful cloud infrastructure to support the growth of their businesses. The company will continue to work with industry partners to develop vertical-specific solutions to facilitate digital transformation of various industries. The company’s strategic initiative to integrate DingTalk with Alibaba Cloud has enabled enterprise customers to digitalize their organization and business collaboration through DingTalk’s open platform, with data generated and accumulated to cloud.

The company strives to make diversified offerings available to its users worldwide by empowering its local merchants and partners, supported by its supply chain advantages in China and cross-border capabilities. In addition to further clarifying its commitment to the three major strategies, the company has formally announced ESG as the key strategy of Alibaba’s social responsibility.

Businesses

China Commerce

China Commerce Retail

The company operates the largest retail commerce business in the world. The company’s retail commerce businesses in China, primarily consisting of Taobao, Tmall, Taobao Deals, Taocaicai and its various direct sales businesses, which offer upgraded consumer experiences with integrated online and offline capabilities, have become an important part of the everyday lives of consumers in China. Empowered by the company’s commerce technologies and services, it appeals to a massive base of consumers by connecting them with diversified and comprehensive offerings in highly engaging and social formats.

Consumers

The company serves a large and growing consumer base, across both large cities and less-developed areas. Annual active consumers of China commerce retail business reached 903 million in the twelve months ended March 31, 2022. Over 70% of the new annual active consumers in fiscal year 2022 were from less-developed areas.

Taobao Deals offers consumers value-for-money products and achieved rapid user growth in fiscal year 2022. Annual active consumers of Taobao Deals reached over 300 million for the twelve months ended March 31, 2022. More than 20% of these annual active consumers of Taobao Deals were users that never shopped on Taobao or Tmall previously. Taocaicai provides consumers with next-day pick-up services for a wide range of groceries and fresh goods at neighborhood pick-up points. More than 50% of Taocaicai’s annual active consumers in the twelve months ended March 31, 2022, were first-time fresh produce buyers on the company’s various platforms.

In addition, the company’s ability to offer and deliver value has driven increased consumer engagement over time. Consumers on Taobao and Tmall continue to exhibit high retention. In fiscal year 2022, there were more than 124 million annual active consumers who each spent more than (Renminbi) RMB10,000 on purchasing physical goods on Taobao and Tmall. Approximately 98% of annual active consumers who each spent over RMB10,000 on purchasing physical goods on Taobao and Tmall in fiscal year 2021 continued to be active in fiscal year 2022.

Products and Services

The Alibaba Ecosystem offers the most comprehensive range of products and services among global commerce platforms to meet the diverse demands of the company’s massive and growing consumer base across different segments. The company has developed a digital commerce infrastructure that offers an upgraded consumer experience by seamlessly integrating online and offline capabilities for its marketplaces and direct sales businesses. Consumers can enjoy a broad variety of quality products at different price points with a wide selection of delivery options that satisfy their varying needs. The core capabilities that form the critical foundation of the company’s digital commerce infrastructure include the following:

Product and Supply Chain Capabilities. The company’s ecosystem provides the most comprehensive product and service offerings. The company’s platforms, through collaboration with its merchants and ecosystem partners, offer products ranging from branded products and imported goods to products sourced directly from manufacturers, farms and other long-tail products. For example, consumers may look for branded products, including luxury brands, trendy fashion brands and new brands, on Tmall, and imported products from around the world on Tmall Global. Taobao Deals enables manufacturers and merchants to sell directly to consumers to meet their needs for value-for-money products. Taocaicai satisfies consumers’ needs for quality and affordable groceries and fresh goods with its next-day pick-up services. Through Idle Fish, the company’s consumer-to-consumer community and marketplace in China, consumers can find a variety of second-hand, recycled, refurbished, for-rent and other long-tail products. In addition, the company continues to expand its proprietary supply chain through its direct sales businesses to further enhance its product supply and service capabilities. For example, the company leverages Sun Art’s, Freshippo’s and their retail partners’ supply chain networks to provide greater selection of fresh goods and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods). The company also continues to go upstream to source agricultural products directly to enhance its product selection, as well as provide more local and seasonal specialties to its consumers. These extensive supply chain networks and the company’s in-house sourcing capabilities enable it to further penetrate into various verticals, including FMCG, fresh produce, electronics and home appliances.

Fulfillment and Delivery Expertise: The company has developed logistics expertise and capabilities that allow it to offer a full range of high-frequency fulfillment services to satisfy consumer demand. The company’s comprehensive delivery options include on-demand delivery, half-day delivery, same-or-next-day delivery and next-day pick-up services, which capture the varying needs of consumers living in large cities and less-developed areas. For example, Freshippo’s proprietary fulfillment system enables store-to-door 30-minute delivery to consumers living within a three-kilometer radius of a Freshippo store; the company provides groceries and fresh goods to consumers with Taocaicai’ next-day pick-up services; and Tmall Supermarket offers daily necessities, FMCG and general merchandise through Taobao app with same-or-next-day delivery services.

Engagement

The massive amount of user and merchant activities taking place every day on the company’s China commerce platforms generate significant consumer insights. By leveraging proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) and data technologies, the company is able to aggregate and build on deep consumer insights to provide more accurate search results and relevant recommendation feeds that enhance the shopping experience for its consumers. The company’s various commerce platforms also enable merchants to engage with consumers through a variety of formats, including livestreaming, short-form videos, interactive games and microblogs. The company continues to introduce interactive features and innovative formats to facilitate user engagement with brands, merchants and content creators. Along with these features and formats, the company’s relevant and engaging entertainment content plays an important role in consumers’ product discovery process and shopping journey by providing an immersive and personalized shopping experience, driving user stickiness and retention on its various platforms.

Comprehensive Product and Service Offerings

Taobao app offers consumers a comprehensive range of products and services and a unique social commerce experience through highly relevant content, personalized shopping recommendations and interactive features that drive social engagement.

Theme-Based Recommendation

Recommendation feeds of product listings and various theme-based content, enabled by the company’s extensive consumer insights and proprietary data technologies, provide its consumers with a relevant and engaging content discovery process and shopping experience.

Taobao Live – 24/7 Livestreaming

Taobao Live, where merchants and key opinion leaders (KOLs) use livestreaming to market to their fans and customers, provides a fun and interactive shopping experience for consumers, and has become one of the fast-growing sales formats on the company’s various China commerce retail platforms.

Curated Product Recommendation

Consumers also come to Taobao app to discover new trends and browse for ideas, where recommendations are based on extensive user-generated content and empowered by the company’s proprietary data technologies. The company continues to enhance interactive features and formats to provide relevant and engaging entertainment content, driving user stickiness and retention on its various platforms.

Value-For-Money Products Offered by Taobao Deals

Taobao Deals offers value-for-money products by enabling merchants and manufacturers to sell directly to consumers, including those in less-developed areas and large cities. Consumers are attracted to Taobao Deals’ clear value proposition and its growing product selections from different verticals.

Community Marketplace for Groceries and Fresh Goods

The company’s community marketplace business, Taocaicai, provides consumers with next-day pick-up services for groceries and fresh goods at neighborhood pick-up points. Taocaicai is driving higher penetration into its China annual active consumers’ purchases of food, grocery and fresh produce, enhancing consumers’ purchase frequency and stickiness on its various platforms.

New Product Release Platform for Brands and Retailers

Leveraging the company’s consumer insights and data technologies, Tmall Hey Box is a dedicated platform for brands and retailers to launch their new products.

Tmall Flagship 2.0 – Enabling Merchants to Engage with Consumers

Tmall Flagship 2.0 enables merchants to enhance consumers’ shopping experience by providing additional interactive features.

Taobao

Taobao means search for treasure in Chinese. Taobao serves as the starting point and destination portal for many users’ shopping journey. Consumers from both large cities and less-developed areas come to Taobao to enjoy an engaging, personalized shopping experience, optimized by the company’s data analytics and technology. Through highly relevant content, engaging and interactive formats and real-time updates from merchants, consumers can learn about products and new trends. They can also interact with each other and their favorite merchants and KOLs through a broad range of interactive features, such as livestreaming and short-form videos. Taobao is China’s largest digital retail platform.

Taobao provides a top-level traffic funnel that directs users to the various marketplaces, channels and features within the company’s ecosystem. For example, a search result on Taobao displays listings not only from Taobao merchants but also from Tmall merchants and brands, thereby generating traffic for Tmall. Through Taobao, consumers can also find long-tail products on Idle Fish, the company’s consumer-to-consumer community and marketplace in China, as well as other products and consumer services, which may also be accessed through their respective independent mobile apps.

Merchants on Taobao are primarily individuals and small businesses. Merchants can create storefronts and listings on Taobao free of charge. The escrow payment services provided by Alipay.com Co., Ltd. (Alipay) are free of charge to consumers and merchants unless payment is funded through a credit product, such as a credit card, in which case Alipay charges a fee to the merchant based on the related bank fees charged to Alipay. Taobao merchants can purchase P4P (pay-for-performance), in-feed marketing and display marketing services to direct traffic to their storefronts. In addition, merchants can acquire additional traffic from third-party marketing affiliates. Taobao merchants can also pay for advanced storefront software that helps upgrade, decorate and manage their online storefronts.

Tmall

Tmall caters to consumers’ ever-growing demand for high-quality products and premium shopping experience. A large number of international and Chinese brands and retailers have established storefronts on Tmall. The company has positioned Tmall as a trusted platform for consumers in China and overseas to buy both homegrown and international-branded products, as well as products not available in traditional retail outlets. As the brands and offerings on Tmall continue to grow and diversify, the company continues to improve its ability to accurately target and meet different consumer demands.

Tmall is the partner of choice for brands. Brands and retailers operate their own storefronts on Tmall with unique brand identities and look and feel, accompanied by full control over their own branding and merchandising. As of March 31, 2022, there were over 320,000 brands and merchants on Tmall, including over 80% of the consumer brands ranked in the Forbes Top 100 World’s Most Valuable Brands for 2021.

Tmall has driven the digitalization and transformation of brands and retailers by enabling them to digitalize their operations, engage, acquire and retain consumers, increase brand recognition, innovate product offerings, manage supply chains and enhance operational efficiency. In particular, Tmall offers a variety of one-stop brand marketing and promotional products to help brands and retailers quickly acquire new users, enhance brand awareness and launch new products.

The company also continues to position Tmall as the premier shopping destination for everyday items, highlighting value and convenience. FMCG, apparel and accessories, and consumer electronics are among Tmall’s most popular product categories. The company has also strengthened consumer recognition of Tmall’s value proposition in consumer electronics and home appliances through promotional events and strategic partnerships.

In 2009, Tmall pioneered the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. The company’s thirteenth annual 11.11 Global Shopping Festival in 2021 showcased its social responsibility initiatives and its commitment to building a sustainable future. A record of 290,000 brands participated in the 11-day shopping festival in 2021, including merchants and manufacturers from agricultural belts in less-developed regions, which generated healthy GMV (the value of confirmed orders of products and services on its marketplaces, regardless of how, or whether, the buyer and seller settle the transaction) growth year-over-year. In addition, a dedicated eco-friendly vertical on Tmall featured 500,000 products with official Green Product Certification from more than 2,000 merchants.

Like merchants on Taobao, brands and merchants on Tmall have access to P4P, in-feed marketing and display marketing services, as well as storefront software, which they can use to fully engineer, customize, and even code the software behind their storefronts.

Taobao Deals

Taobao Deals offers value-for-money products by enabling merchants and manufacturers to sell directly to consumers, including those in less-developed areas and large cities. Taobao Deals experienced strong growth in fiscal year 2022 with annual active consumers reaching over 300 million for the twelve months ended March 31, 2022, contributing additional traffic to the Alibaba Ecosystem. More than 20% of these annual active consumers of Taobao Deals were users that never shopped on Taobao or Tmall previously. During fiscal year 2022, the number of paid orders on Taobao Deals grew over 100% year-over-year. In addition, Taobao Deals has attracted a growing number of merchants and manufacturers that offer a broader selection of value-for-money products to the company’s consumers, creating a virtuous cycle.

Taocaicai

Taocaicai is the company’s community marketplace that offers consumers next-day pick-up services for a wide range of groceries and fresh goods at neighborhood pick-up points. Leveraging the strong product and supply chain capabilities of Sun Art Retail Group Limited (Sun Art), Taobao Deals and Lingshoutong, Taocaicai provides consumers with a broad selection of quality groceries and fresh produce at competitive prices. In fiscal year 2022, Taocaicai has rapidly established market presence in regions that have large population with meaningful consumption power and successfully completed the development of a network of core regional distribution centers and warehouses in these targeted regions, generating robust GMV growth. Taocaicai is driving higher penetration into the company’s China annual active consumers’ purchases of food, grocery and fresh produce, which enhances consumers’ purchase frequency and stickiness on its various platforms. More than 50% of Taocaicai’s annual active consumers were first-time fresh produce buyers on the company’s various platforms for the twelve months ended March 31, 2022.

Tmall Supermarket

Tmall Supermarket offers daily necessities, FMCG and general merchandise through Taobao app with same-or-next-day delivery services. By leveraging the company’s technology capabilities and consumer insights, Tmall Supermarket facilitates the digital transformation of its offline partners, enhancing their supply chain management capabilities.

Tmall Global

Tmall Global addresses increasing demand of consumers in China for international products and brands. Tmall Global serves as the premier platform through which overseas brands and retailers reach consumers in China, build brand awareness and gain valuable consumer insights in forming their overall China strategies, without the need for physical operations in China. Tmall Global was a leading import e-commerce platform in China in terms of GMV in the twelve months ended March 31, 2022.

Digital Healthcare and Pharmaceutical E-commerce

Alibaba Health Information Technology Limited (Alibaba Health) is the company’s flagship vehicle that offers one-stop solutions to consumers through integrating online and offline resources of the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. The company prioritizes the needs of the customers through leveraging the strength of the existing pharmaceutical e-commerce business along with exploring innovative business models of Internet healthcare services.

Freshippo

Freshippo, the company’s proprietary retail chain for groceries and fresh goods, exemplifies the creation of a new shopping experience through the convergence of online and offline activities by using retail stores to warehouse and fulfill online orders, in addition to offering a rich and fun experience to customers who shop in-store. Its proprietary fulfillment system enables 30-minute delivery to customers living within a three-kilometer radius of a Freshippo store. Freshippo’s mobile app allows consumers to search for products and place orders while browsing in store. Freshippo also improves its supply chain efficiency through data technology. As of March 31, 2022, the company had 273 self-operated Freshippo Stores, primarily located in tier-one and tier-two cities in China.

Sun Art

Sun Art is a leading retailer with hypermarket and online businesses in China. To improve consumer experience, Sun Art continues to digitalize its offline retail stores and integrate its online and offline retail capabilities, such as using storefronts and fresh produce processing centers as warehouses to fulfill online orders. By managing inventory and offline resources effectively, these stores satisfy consumers’ demands for shopping in-store, as well as in their neighborhood communities, driving revenue opportunities.

Branding and Monetization Platforms

Alimama, the company’s Proprietary Monetization Platform

Alimama is the company’s monetization platform. Using its proprietary technology, this platform matches the marketing demands of merchants, brands and retailers on all of the platforms in the Alibaba Ecosystem with the media resources on the company’s own platforms and third-party properties, and enables it to monetize its China commerce, International commerce, Local consumer services, Cainiao, Digital media and entertainment and other businesses in its ecosystem. The platform supports P4P marketing services based on keyword search rankings, in-feed marketing targeting different groups of consumers, or display marketing at fixed positions that are bid on through auctions, as well as cost per thousand impression (CPM)-based, time-based marketing formats, or individual campaigns at fixed cost, through the display of photos, graphics, videos and livestreaming.

The ranking of P4P search results on the company’s marketplaces is based upon proprietary algorithms that take into account the bid price of keywords, the popularity and quality of an item, service or merchant, as well as customer feedback rankings of the merchant or service provider. The company’s in-feed and display marketing services take these factors into consideration, along with other consumer insights generated across its ecosystem, to further deliver an engaging and relevant content discovery process and shopping experience to its consumers through livestreaming, short-form videos, interactive games and other formats. The relevance and comprehensiveness of insights based on commercial activity and user activity in the company’s ecosystem, as well as its AI capabilities provide a unique advantage for Alimama to deliver the most relevant information to users through highly engaging content and effective format, which in turn enables merchants to improve their efficiency.

Alimama also has an affiliate marketing program that places marketing displays on third-party apps and websites, thereby enabling marketers, if they so choose, to extend their marketing and promotional reach to properties and users beyond its own platforms. The company’s affiliate marketing program not only provides additional traffic to its marketplaces, but also generates revenue to it.

Alimama operates Taobao Ad Network and Exchange, or TANX, one of the largest real-time online bidding marketing exchanges in China. TANX helps publishers to monetize their media inventories both on mobile apps and web properties. TANX automates the buying and selling of tens of billions of marketing impressions on a daily basis.

Participants on TANX include publishers, marketers and demand-side platforms operated by agencies.

Marketing Partner of Choice for Brands

Drawing on the company’s proprietary technology, capabilities and consumer insights, it has developed an approach that digitalizes consumer-brand relationships and enables brands to build robust relationships with consumers throughout their lifecycles in its ecosystem.

Leading Commerce Technologies and Integrated Merchant Services Platform

The company provides merchants, brands and retailers with a comprehensive suite of commerce technologies, consumer insights and innovative online and offline services through a unified and intuitive platform, to better engage with their customers, build mindshare and optimize their operating efficiency. By leveraging the power of the company’s ecosystem, merchants, brands and retailers on Taobao and Tmall can acquire, retain and further deepen their engagement with consumers in an efficient and effective manner, build brand awareness and deliver seamless consumer experience with its logistics and fulfillment capabilities. This enhances merchants’, brands’ and retailers’ loyalty to the company’s platforms. The company’s commerce technologies and merchant services include the following key components:

Effective Consumer Engagement Platform

The company’s merchants, brands and retailers can leverage its proprietary technology, consumer insights, and cloud services to optimize their marketing strategies. The company equips brands on its secure cloud-based platform with integrated online and offline capabilities and solutions, and provide them with access to sophisticated analytics services. These services help merchants, brands and retailers gain insights into each stage of the consumer journey and enable them to provide personalized and seamless online and offline shopping experience that fulfills consumers’ evolving consumption needs.

Cloud-based Smart Operation Dashboard

The company provides a cloud-based integrated smart operation dashboard that enables merchants, brands and retailers to digitalize their daily operations. Through its online dashboard, the company’s merchants, brands and retailers can easily manage their storefronts and product listings, source products, process orders and payments, fulfill orders and provide customer services. Leveraging the capabilities of its third-party service providers, it also provides its merchants, brands and retailers with access to various types of business software, content creators, credit financing, information technology (IT) services and market data analytics. In addition, the company’s merchants, brands and retailers can access its smart operation dashboard through mobile devices to manage their business on the go.

Enabled by the company’s analytics capabilities and consumer insights, its smart operation dashboard also provides merchants with recommendations on the most effective approaches to improve their respective performance and to deliver differentiated services to their customers.

China Commerce Wholesale

1688.com

1688.com provides sourcing and online transaction services by connecting manufacturers and wholesale sellers to wholesale buyers in China. These manufacturers, wholesale sellers and wholesale buyers typically trade in apparel, accessories, packaging materials, office supplies, home decoration and furnishing materials, electronics and computers, among others. Sellers may purchase a China TrustPass membership for an annual subscription fee to list items on 1688.com, reach customers, provide quotations and transact on the marketplace without any additional charges. As of March 31, 2022, 1688.com had over 990,000 paying members. Paying members may also pay for value-added services, such as premium data analytics and upgraded storefront management tools, as well as customer management services, such as P4P marketing services from the website and app. In the twelve months ended March 31, 2022, value-added services contributed the majority of 1688.com’s total revenue.

International Commerce

International Commerce Retail

In the twelve months ended March 31, 2022, Lazada (Lazada South East Asia Pte. Ltd.), AliExpress, Trendyol and Daraz together served a total of 305 million annual active consumers overseas and generated combined order growth of around 34%, driven by a broader range of local and global product offerings and enhanced consumer experience provided by these platforms.

Lazada

Lazada South East Asia Pte. Ltd. (Lazada), a leading and fast-growing e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, serves one of the largest user bases among the global e-commerce platforms, by providing consumers with access to a broad range of offerings from local SMEs, and regional and global brands. In March 2022, Lazada reached the milestone of over one million monthly active sellers. Additionally, Lazada serves its consumers and merchants with reliable, quality and convenient logistics services that are critical to online shopping experience in Southeast Asia. Lazada operates one of the leading e-commerce logistics network in Southeast Asia, with the vast majority of Lazada’s parcels going through its own facilities or first- and last-mile fleet. During fiscal year 2022, the number of paid orders of Lazada grew 60% year-over-year.

AliExpress

AliExpress is a global marketplace targeting consumers around the world and enabling them to buy directly from manufacturers and distributors in China and around the world. AliExpress continues to expand its regional merchant networks and supply chains to make available more localized products and services for consumers in their respective regions. In addition to the global English-language version, AliExpress platform is also available in 17 other languages, including Portuguese, Spanish and French. Consumers can access the marketplace through AliExpress’s mobile app or websites. Top consumer markets where AliExpress is popular are the United States, Brazil, France and Spain.

Trendyol

Trendyol serves local consumers with a broad selection of products and services through its e-commerce business, as well as instant delivery services for food and groceries. Consumers also enjoy the quality and convenient delivery services provided by Trendyol’s fulfillment and logistics networks, namely Trendyol Express for e-commerce business and Trendyol GO for instant delivery services. Beyond Türkiye, Trendyol has expanded internationally by leveraging its product sourcing capabilities and supply chain advantages in Türkiye, enabling Turkish merchants to serve global consumers with a wide selection of products through more than 50 third-party e-commerce platforms across six continents. During fiscal year 2022, Trendyol continued to grow rapidly, with 68% order growth and approximately 80% GMV growth in local currency year-over-year.

International Commerce Wholesale

Alibaba.com is China’s largest integrated international online wholesale marketplace in terms of revenue in 2021, according to Analysys (Analysys, a research institution). It connects Chinese and overseas suppliers to overseas wholesale buyers, who are typically trade agents, wholesalers, retailers, manufacturers and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engaged in the import and export business, and provides sourcing, online transaction, digital marketing, digital supply chain fulfillment and financial services to them.

Sellers on Alibaba.com may purchase an annual Gold Supplier membership to reach customers, provide quotations and transact on the marketplace. As of March 31, 2022, Alibaba.com had over 245,000 paying members from China and around the world. Sellers may also purchase additional value-added services to manage product listings and facilitate transaction processes, such as upgraded storefront management tools, customer relationship management (CRM) software-as-a-service (SaaS) services, P4P marketing services, trade assurance and fulfillment services, mainly, including logistics and custom clearance services. In the twelve months ended March 31, 2022, value-added services contributed the majority of Alibaba.com’s total revenue. Additionally, over 40 million buyers from over 190 countries sourced business opportunities or completed transactions on Alibaba.com in the twelve months ended March 31, 2022.

Local Consumer Services

The company uses mobile and online technology to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and convenience of consumer services for both service providers and their customers in two distinct scenarios: To-Home and To-Destination. The company served a large and growing consumer base of 376 million annual active consumers, generating order volume growth of over 25% year-over-year for the twelve months ended March 31, 2022.

The company’s To-Home businesses, including Ele.me and Taoxianda, enable consumers to easily access merchants’ services at home. In fiscal year 2022, To-Home businesses recorded healthy order volume growth year-over-year.

Ele.me, a leading local services and on-demand delivery platform in China, enables consumers to use the Ele.me, Alipay, Taobao and Koubei mobile apps to order meals, food, groceries, FMCG, flowers and pharmaceutical products online. In addition, Fengniao Logistics, Ele.me’s on-demand delivery network, provides last-mile logistics services, including delivery of food, groceries, FMCG and pharmaceutical products for Freshippo, Sun Art (Sun Art Retail Group Limited), Alibaba Health, as well as Taoxianda. The company’s strategy for Ele.me is to leverage its China commerce platforms, Alipay and its data technology to expand its offerings from shopping to services, further tapping into new addressable markets for consumption in China.

Taoxianda, the company’s online-offline integration service solution for FMCG brands and third-party grocery retail partners, facilitates the digitalization of retailers’ operations, helps them open online stores and provides customized marketing recommendations.

The company’s To-Destination businesses, including Amap, Fliggy and Koubei, provide consumers with convenient access to quality services at their destinations. In fiscal year 2022, the order volume of To-Destination businesses grew rapidly year-over-year.

Amap: Amap is a leading provider of mobile digital map, navigation and real-time traffic information in China. Amap empowers major mobile apps across different industry verticals, including local services, ride-hailing and social networking, which end users can access directly through Amap’s leading open platform. In addition, Amap provides digital map data, navigation software and real-time traffic information to international and domestic automobile manufacturers, as well as aftermarket consumers in China. Amap also empowers major platforms and infrastructural service providers in the company’s ecosystem, including its China commerce, Cainiao and Alipay.

Fliggy, a leading online travel platform in China, provides comprehensive reservation and fulfillment services for airline and train tickets, accommodation, car rental, package tours and local attractions. Fliggy leverages its platform to help various industry partners, such as hotels, to integrate their services and membership systems, and utilize digital marketing to provide users with more travel options.

Koubei, the company’s restaurant and local services guide platform for in-store consumption, provides targeted, data-driven marketing tools and integrated digital operational and store management services for restaurants and local services providers.

Cainiao

The company is committed to further strengthening the capabilities of its global logistics network. The company’s vision for its logistics services is to fulfill consumer orders within 24 hours in China and within 72 hours anywhere else in the world. To realize this vision, Cainiao continues to build and operates a global fulfillment network together with its logistics partners. It offers domestic and international one-stop-shop logistics services and supply chain management solutions, addressing various logistics needs of merchants and consumers at scale.

Consumer Logistics

Cainiao uses data insights and technology to digitalize the entire logistics process and enhance the capabilities of its logistics partners, thereby improving consumer experience and efficiency across the logistics value chain. As an important complement to the last-mile delivery network of Cainiao’s express delivery partners, Cainiao has also developed a neighborhood logistics solution with a combination of neighborhood, campus and rural village stations and residential self-pickup lockers, which the company calls Cainiao Post. The company continues to build neighborhood logistics solutions to cover both urban and rural areas, allowing consumers to pick up their packages from their nearest stations or residential self-pickup lockers easily. The company has expanded Cainiao Post coverage nationally with an increasing focus in less-developed and rural areas, complementing its China commerce businesses’ geographic expansion strategy. The number of Cainiao Posts in rural areas grew more than 100% year-over-year in fiscal year 2022. Consumers can also enjoy parcel pick-up at doorstep and time-guaranteed delivery service through Cainiao.

Cainiao also collaborates with DAMO Academy to research and develop advanced technologies to be deployed in products and services to digitalize and enhance the efficiency of the logistics industry. For example, Cainiao has been driving the adoption of the company’s proprietary L4 self-driving vehicle Xiaomanlv for unmanned delivery of parcels within gated communities and campuses. From inception through March 31, 2022, Xiaomanlv had delivered over 10 million parcels, leading the industry of unmanned neighborhood delivery.

Technology-Driven Integrated Supply Chain and Fulfillment Solutions for Merchants

The geographical area of China and wide distribution of consumers and merchants in China require a large and distributed logistics infrastructure. Cainiao has established a scalable fulfillment network that consists of fulfillment hubs at key strategic locations and package sorting and distribution centers, which are owned, leased or partnered with logistics partners. The fulfillment network is connected by Cainiao’s proprietary logistics data platform. Cainiao has built a full-fledged fulfillment network at provincial, city, and county levels, which offers customized fulfillment solutions to different types of merchants on the company’s platforms. For medium-sized and large brands and merchants, the company provides integrated supply chain management solutions, allowing them to place inventory across multiple locations in advance based on sales forecasts to optimize supply chain efficiency and ensure timely delivery to consumers. For small-sized merchants in industrial belts, the company provides highly competitive and cost-efficient fulfillment services.

Cainiao has developed a strong and expanding network of assets and partners to support merchants on the company’s cross-border and international commerce retail businesses, mainly AliExpress, Tmall Global and Lazada. For example, from a China import standpoint, Cainiao focuses on developing cross-border fulfillment solutions for Tmall Global, utilizing a combination of bonded warehouses in China and direct shipment from markets outside mainland China. In terms of China export, Cainiao serves businesses on AliExpress platform by providing them with attractive value-for-money, convenient and direct logistics channels to deliver packages to consumers worldwide. As of March 31, 2022, Cainiao directly operated nine overseas sorting centers and partnered with over 500 logistics partners to provide fulfillment services globally. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2022, Cainiao’s daily average cross-border and international package volume exceeded 4.5 million.

Cloud

The company’s Cloud segment is consisted of Alibaba Cloud and DingTalk.

Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Group is the world’s third largest and Asia Pacific’s largest Infrastructure-as-a-service provider by revenue in 2021. Alibaba Group is also China’s largest provider of public cloud services by revenue in 2021, including PaaS (platform-as-a-service) and IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) services.

The technologies that power Alibaba Cloud grew out of the company’s own need to operate at the massive scale and to address the complexity of its China businesses, including related payments and logistics elements. Leveraging the company’s full-stack cloud infrastructure design capabilities and proprietary hardware system, Alibaba Cloud offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including proprietary servers, elastic computing, storage, network, security, database and big data. Alibaba Cloud also provides a wide range of proprietary IoT technologies, products and services that can be fully integrated with its cloud solutions, such as IoT platform technologies, IoT wireless technologies, edge AI computing, microchip design and development framework, operating systems and on-device AI technologies. The company leverages these capabilities and technologies to support the Alibaba Ecosystem and provides its customers across various verticals with industry-specific solutions, including those for commerce, finance, and industrial applications. In addition, as part of its globalization strategy, Alibaba Cloud continued to expand the company’s international cloud computing infrastructure to better serve its clients’ needs in countries overseas. As of March 31, 2022, Alibaba Cloud offers computing services in 27 regions globally and added new IDCs (International Data Corporation, a research institution) in Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Germany in fiscal year 2022. Highlights of its proprietary technologies in fiscal year 2022 include:

Proprietary Server Technology – Alibaba Cloud possesses full-stack cloud infrastructure design capabilities, ranging from data centers and networks technologies to proprietary hardware. In fiscal year 2022, the company unveiled its proprietary server series Panjiu, including high-performance computing series, large-scale storage series, and high-performance storage series. The company’s server series adopts a flexible modular design that allows separation of compute and storage, which provides its customers the flexibility to meet varying demands of different business scenarios. The company’s Panjiu server series integrates software and hardware to achieve leading performance in computing, storage, and security to help its customers succeed in the cloud-native era.

Database – The company has developed the next-generation cloud-native database, PolarDB, which meets its customers’ increasing demands and requirements for on-demand storage, transaction processing and computation, elasticity and scalability. Alibaba Cloud is the Asian large-scale global database management systems cloud provider.

In addition, the company offers solutions of DingTalk, a digital collaboration workplace and application development platform, to customers of Alibaba Cloud. This platform offers enterprises enhanced work collaboration capabilities and provides them with easy access to Alibaba Cloud’s capabilities and infrastructure to further facilitate their digital transformation.

Alibaba Cloud’s unique advantages lie in its proprietary technology and Alibaba Group’s continued commitment to invest in research and development in new product offerings and industry-specific solutions for the company’s customers and partners. Alibaba Cloud continues to attract customers that are reputable and have the potential to adopt cloud services at a meaningful scale. In fiscal year 2022, Alibaba Cloud served more than 60% of A-share listed companies in China. As digital transformation accelerates, the company’s customers, especially those from traditional verticals, have increased their usage of its services. In fiscal year 2022, revenue contribution from non-Internet industries accounted for 50% of Alibaba Cloud’s revenue after inter-segment elimination. The company’s cloud services have become a critical foundation that many of its customers increasingly depend on in their daily operations.

DingTalk

DingTalk is the company’s digital collaboration workplace and application development platform that offers new ways of working, sharing and collaboration for modern enterprises and organizations. Millions of enterprises and users use DingTalk to stay connected and work remotely.

The company’s strategic initiative to integrate DingTalk with Alibaba Cloud aims to empower DingTalk with its cloud capabilities and big data analytics to facilitate the digital transformation of enterprises and organizations. DingTalk provides a comprehensive suite of solutions for enterprise collaboration, including real-time communication, organizational management and various network collaboration tools, such as data storage, calendars, workflow management and shared documents. Enterprises can also enjoy convenient access to a broad range of applications, including those offered by third-party service providers, that are seamlessly integrated with DingTalk’s platform. In addition, DingTalk has launched a low-code development infrastructure that enables enterprises to develop customized solutions. Large-scale enterprises with complex needs can also directly leverage DingTalk’s open infrastructure to develop fully customized digital solutions.

Digital Media and Entertainment

The company’s digital media and entertainment businesses leverage its deep consumer insights to serve the broader interests of consumers through its key distribution platforms, including Youku, and its other diverse content platforms, including Alibaba Pictures that provide online videos, films, live events, newsfeeds and literature, among others.

Key Distribution Platform

Youku

Youku is the third largest online long-form video platform in China. It enables users to search, view and share high-quality video content quickly and easily across multiple devices. The Youku brand is among the most-recognized online video brands in China.

Insights the company gains from its ecosystem and its proprietary technology enable Youku to deliver relevant digital media and entertainment content to its users. At the same time, Youku helps drive customer loyalty to the company’s China commerce business by promoting and providing complementary content offerings to users. For example, members of 88VIP, a loyalty program of its China commerce business, can purchase a Youku membership at a preferential rate or be rewarded a membership free of charge. Youku is also the exclusive online video platform to livestream major events of its China commerce business, such as the countdown gala celebration for the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, which is supported by interactive features on Youku to drive consumer engagement. In fiscal year 2022, Youku’s daily average paying subscribers increased by approximately 15% from the prior fiscal year. The increase in paying subscribers was driven by the company’s offerings of original and exclusive content and a greater contribution from the 88VIP membership program on Taobao platform. In addition, the company operates a number of other AI-driven platforms that effectively deliver relevant and engaging content to its large and growing user base.

Quark

Quark provides young users with a one-stop platform for information search, storage and consumption. It offers tools and services, such as smart search, Quark cloud drive, AI camera, Quark learning and Quark documents, to help users better acquire and utilize a variety of digital content and information for learning and work purposes.

Key Content Platforms

The company offers a diverse range of digital media and entertainment content using a sustainable production and acquisition approach. First, the company provides self-produced content. Second, the company also jointly produces content with studios, some of which is distributed exclusively on its platforms. Third, the company acquires rights to display content on its digital media and entertainment platforms pursuant to licensing agreements with rights holders. Last, the company offers an open platform on which user-generated content and professional-generated content are produced and distributed. The company’s digital media and entertainment offerings include online videos, films, live events, newsfeeds and literature.

Alibaba Pictures, driven by high-quality content and technology, is an integrated platform that provides content production, promotion and distribution, intellectual property-related licensing and commercial management, cinema ticketing management and Internet data services for the entertainment industry. Among the top ten domestic movies in terms of ticket sales for the twelve months ended March 31, 2022, Alibaba Pictures participated in the production and distribution of eight movies, including The Battle at Lake Changjin, Water Gate Bridge, and My Country, My Parents, demonstrating the company’s consistent standards for selecting high-quality films. In addition, Alibaba Pictures continues to diversify its businesses to capture opportunities across the entertainment value chain, including content development, production, promotion and distribution, as well as IP commercialization. Through Damai, a leading online ticketing platform for live events in China, the company provides users with ticketing services for popular concerts, plays and sporting events.

In addition, through Lingxi Games, the company engages in the development, distribution and operation of mobile games.

Innovation Initiatives and Others

DAMO Academy

In October 2017, the company established DAMO Academy, a global research program in cutting-edge technologies that aim to integrate and speed up knowledge exchange between science and industry. DAMO Academy encourages a collaborative environment that facilitates the application of scientific discoveries to real-life circumstances, as exemplified by the company’s AI pre-training model M6. As the first AI pre-training model in the world to include up to 10 trillion parameters, M6 provides various business applications, such as product design for smart manufacturing.

Tmall Genie

Tmall Genie provides a selection of Internet of things (IoT)-enabled smart home appliances, including smart speakers, lights and remote controls. Specifically, Tmall Genie smart speaker, a leading smart speaker in China in terms of sales units, provides an interactive interface for the company’s customers to easily access services offered by its ecosystem participants.

Sales and Marketing

The company uses other marketing initiatives to promote its platforms. During the most recent fiscal year, the company increased its marketing efforts, such as a highly coordinated marketing and promotional campaign for the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival and dedicated marketing efforts to promote Taobao Deals, in order to expand its user base across developed and less-developed areas.

Seasonality

The company’s overall operating results fluctuate from quarter to quarter as a result of a variety of factors, including seasonal factors and economic cycles that influence consumer spending as well as promotions.

Historically, the company has experienced the highest levels of revenues in the fourth calendar quarter of each year due to a number of factors, including merchants allocating a significant portion of their online marketing budgets to the fourth calendar quarter, promotions, such as the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, and the impact of seasonal buying patterns in respect of certain merchandise categories such as apparel. The company also has experienced lower levels of revenues in the first calendar quarter of each year due to a lower level of operating activities by merchants early in the calendar year and during the Chinese New Year holiday, during which time consumers generally spend less and businesses in China are generally closed. The company’s international commerce businesses are also subject to seasonal fluctuations depending on the markets it operates in.

Regulations

The principal regulations governing advertising businesses in China are the Advertising Law of the PRC (2021, as amended); the Advertising Administrative Regulations (1987, as amended); the Administrative Regulations on Internet Information Search Services (2016); and the Internet Advertising Interim Measures (2016). These laws, rules and regulations require companies such as the company’s that engage in advertising activities to obtain a business license that explicitly includes advertising in the business scope from the State Administration for Market Regulation of the PRC (SAMR) or its local branches.

The company’s online and mobile commerce business is subject to a variety of consumer protection laws, including the PRC Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law, as amended and effective on March 15, 2014, and the Online Trading Measures, both of which have imposed stringent requirements and obligations on business operators, including Internet business operators and platform service providers like it.

History

Alibaba Group Holding Limited was founded in 1999. The company was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1999.

Country
Founded:
1999
IPO Date:
09/19/2014
ISIN Number:
I_US01609W1027

Contact Details

Address:
969 West Wen Yi Road, Yu Hang District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, 311121, China
Phone Number
86 571 8502 2088

Key Executives

CEO:
Wu, Yongming
CFO
Xu, Hong
COO:
Data Unavailable