Alibaba overview

Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company specialising in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and a team of 17 friends and students, the company provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services via web portals, as well as electronic payment services, shopping search engines and cloud computing services. 

Alibaba is the world's largest retailer and e-commerce company, one of the largest Internet and AI companies, one of the biggest venture capital firms, and one of the biggest investment corporations in the world. The company hosts the largest B2B (Alibaba.com), C2C (Taobao), and B2C (Tmall) marketplaces in the world. Its online sales and profits surpassed all US retailers (including Walmart, Amazon, and eBay) combined since 2015. It also sets the record on the 2019 edition of China's Singles' Day, the world's biggest online and offline shopping day, with gross merchandise volume hitting $38.4bn, up around 26% compared to the previous year.

In the fiscal year ended March 31 2019, Alibaba's revenue was US$56,152m, an increase of 51% YoY. Annual active consumers on its China retail marketplaces reached 721m, an increase of over 100m compared to that of March 2018.

At closing time on the date of its initial public offering (IPO) – US$25 billion – the world's highest in history, 19 September 2014, Alibaba's market value was US$231 billion. As of 19 December 2018, Alibaba's market cap stood at US$352.28 billion. It is one of the top 10 most valuable and biggest companies in the world. In January 2018, Alibaba became the second Asian company to break the US$500 billion valuation mark, after its competitor Tencent.

In September 2018, Jack Ma, the main founder of Alibaba, announced that he would step down as Chairman in a year's time so he could focus on philanthropy. He was replaced as Chairman by Daniel Zhang in 2019.

As of August 2019, 59% of all listed companies in China are Alibaba Cloud customers.

In 2019 Alibaba filed confidentially for a Hong Kong IPO. Initially planned for August, the company delayed the IPO until November due to protests happening in Hong Kong. It raised at least HK$88bn ($11.3bn), with the potential to reach $12.9bn depending on whether an over-allotment option is used.

In November 2020, Alibaba's Ant Group's IPO was cancelled, one day after Chinese regulators summoned Founder Jack Ma and other executives.

Map showing the location of Alibaba

Hangzhou, China

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Key people

Xiruo Wang Vice President
Pueo Keffer Investor
Cüneyt Erpolat Country Manager - Turkey
James Sheng Managing Director, Singapore
Thomas Ng Investor
Sebastien Badault Managing Director France
Toby Xu Deputy Chief Financial Officer
Kan Junbao Software Development Expert
Faith Teo UX Design Advisor - International UED
Shaoxuan Wang Senior Manager
Miffy Chen Head of Alibaba A.I. Labs
Jerry Yang Member of the Board of Directors
Simon Xie Co-founder, Vice President of Alibaba's China Investment Team
Eddie Wu Co-Founder & Senior Vice President
Yusuf Ibili Director of Supply Chain & Logistics @ AliExpress Brasil
Vern Chen Gm Of Sharing Fish Division
Leo Jiang SVP & Deputy Chief Technology Officer
Shuai Wang Chairman of Marketing and Public Relations Committee
Ming Zeng Chief Strategy Officer
Paul Fu Sr. Director, User Experience
ChunHui Zhang Senior Director
Zhang Yu VP
Maggie Wu Chief Financial Officer
Jack Ma CEO
J. Michael Evans Independent Director
Chen Zhao Research Director, Alibaba DAMO NHCI Lab
Jessie Zheng Chief Platform Governance Officer
Matthew Bassiur Vice President, Head of Global Intellectual Property Enforcement
Chris Tung Chief Marketing Officer
Jeff Zhang CTO
Shuhua Chen AntiFraud Senior Director
Karl Wehner Managing Director (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Turkey, Eastern Europe)
Simon Hu Senior Vice President
Jasmine Yu Senior Interaction Designer
Brion Tingler Head of External Affairs
John Caplan President, North America & Europe
Judy Tong Chief People Officer
Trudy Dai President of Wholesale Marketplaces
Sophie Wu Chief Customer Officer
Angel Zhao President of Alibaba Global Business Group
Itamar Friedman Head of Alibaba Israel MV Lab
Mohd Atasha Alias eFounders Fellowship (Alibaba+ United Nations)
Manjeer Srujan Technology Expert
Raghav Bahl Head of Investments, India
Jamin Dick Head Of Supply Chain, B2B North America
Fei guo Senior Staff Engineer
Luyuan Fan President of Alibaba Digital Media & Entertainment Group
Yangqing Jia Vice President
Xing Tang Vice President
Hao Qian Lazada SG CFO
Li wang Chief Customer Officer, AliExpress Global
Lynn Dong General Manager of Global Merchandising Center, Tmall Global &Kaola
Qingcan Wang Technical experts
Shuling Yao Strategic Investment
Long Zhiyong VP of Cloud Gaming Business Unit
Sandeep Raj Head of BD & Affiliate Marketing (User Growth), Lazada Southeast Asia
Zhang Qing Product Owner
Pierre Poignant Special assistant to Alibaba Group Chairman & CEO
Brian Wong Advisor, Alibaba Global Initiatives
Yunfei Ma Staff Engineer
Fan Jiang CEO of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group
Joseph Tsai Chairman