What is Alibaba?

Alibaba is a mix of Amazon.com, eBay, and Paypal. Customers use Alibaba to shop online, sell unwanted goods and make online payments. Alibaba has two retail sites: Taobao, which features thousands of non-brand name products sold by smaller merchants; and Tmall, which offers brand-name products. The two sites are hugely popular and collectively account for more than half of all parcel deliveries in China. According to The Wall Street Journal, their combined transaction volume in 2012 topped one trillion yuan ($163 billion), more than Amazon and eBay’s revenue combined. Alibaba Group reported a 66 percent on-year surge in revenue to $3.06 billion in the final quarter of 2013, while net income more than doubled to $1.36 billion. The robust earnings report followed a slowdown in the previous three-quarters. U.S. search engine Yahoo’s market value is closely interlinked with Alibaba as it owns a 24 percent stake in the Chinese internet giant worth around $30 billion. Yahoo’s shares rose 9 percent following Alibaba’s quarterly earnings report on Wednesday. Jack Ma, the 49-year old Alibaba founder, is China’s eighth richest man and the 122nd richest man in the world, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $10 billion.

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