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Alibaba Jack Ma dreams about C2C marketplace

Posted by Aliuser on Jan 19, 2009 in Alibaba Hong Kong

Alibaba Jack Ma interview with Financial Time

Perhaps it’s the first interview Jack Ma has done with international-circulated paper in 2009, Mr Ma, Alibaba group’s chairman and founder, spoke to UK-based Financial Times in Alibaba Hong Kong’s office revealing his thought about C2C marketplace in China and his work in Alibaba’s B2B business.

The interview, conducted by Kathrin Hille, was split into three video parts which can be accessed through FT Video. Aliuser briefly came up with a few interesting points as below:

Kathrin Hille from Financial Times_alirens.com

Taobao has higher traffic than eBay and Amazon

“Our traffic is higher than eBay and Amazon, which people do not realize.” Mr Ma revealed in this interview.

“Taobao.com has already over 100 million users, with every 3 Internet users in China, one of them is Taobao user.” he continued.

What’s Mr Ma’s dream? He said he would like Taobao to overtake Walmart Global in the next 10 years.

Alibaba is still strong in cash flow

“We still have more than US$2bn (€1.5bn, £1.3bn) in cash reserves for the group, and the Internet is growing in China, everything is fine, so surviving ourselves is easy,” says Mr Ma.

Yet he stressed the importance of not using money to capture new markets. Mr Ma said new market exploration should be accomplished through cultivation, communication, sharing and open-minded approach.

Alibaba is to help both local and international Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

“We have been testing in the past 10 months, working with banks to get loans for SMEs… With China Construction Bank (中國建設銀行), we have played a faciliator role, giving loans to over 600 companies totalling RMB 1 billion.” Mr Ma recalled.

At the same time, the group has shifted to global strategy, pushing plan for building links for SMEs worldwide, which include Japan, India and Mexico to ship their products into China.

The worst scenario will be seen in the first and second quarter of 2009

Mr Ma projected that the most difficult time would be the first half of this year considering that in the latter part of last year (2008), he witnessed a significant drop of orders from Europe and US buyers.

What’s Jack view on professional manager and leader? You can check it out in the video

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