Alibaba Group was established only 14 years ago, and its online shopping platform broke a sales record on last year’s “Singles’ Day” with promotions which added up to more than 35 billion yuan, surpassing that of any Thanksgiving Day promotions in the US. Ms Maggie Wu, CFO of Alibaba Group, was invited to HKUST Business School to share the group’s milestone developments and its driving force to expand its businesses.
Ms Wu joined Alibaba in 2007, a few years after its most popular C2C online marketplace Taobao.com was introduced, but long enough to witness the group’s astonishing growth into a diverse e-commerce ecosystem. Over the years, she has witnessed the launch of a B2C shopping platform Tmall.com, large-scale promotion activities and online financial services, etc.
Chase Opportunities vs Solve Problems
Ms Wu first talked about the entrepreneurial story of Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group and how it took him three attempts to be admitted into the Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute in becoming an English teacher. In 1999, Mr Ma noticed that it was very difficult for mainland sellers to find overseas buyers. By leveraging the emergence of the Internet, Mr Ma set up a simple B2B portal called Alibaba with his friends. Alibaba Group started with Alibaba.com and continued expanding its online businesses ever since.
Ms Wu said Alibaba Group’s expansion has been driven by “solving problems”, and not “chasing opportunities”. As an example, she explained that its third-party online payment solution “Alipay” was launched in 2004 to resolve the problem of distrust between shoppers and buyers with an escrow system. Similarly, in view of the growing data transaction, Alibaba introduced its cloud computing and data management services in 2009. “These innovations are the outcome of our efforts to solve problems,” she added.
Prepare to aim high
Alibaba Group is not easily self-satisfied. There are already some 100 million people shopping on Taoboo.com every day with more than 800 million product listings available, but the group keeps introducing new initiatives, including the launch of the “Singles’ Day” shopping festival .
Ms Wu said Alibaba would always put customers first, and especially help SMEs to grow their businesses and fulfill their dreams.
To last for at least 102 years
During the Q&A session, the moderator of the talk and Associate Dean of the Business School Prof Xu Yan together with students expressed their opinions on e-commerce and raised questions on a few potential online shopping problems. Ms Wu said the group has been taking proactive steps to improve its corporate social responsibility and transparency, and it would continue to pursue its dreams despite any challenges it might encounter.
Over the past 14 years, Alibaba Group has seized many opportunities by “solving problems”. Ms Wu said the group vowed to last for at least 102 years as they wanted to see their business span across three centuries from 1999 to 2101.