Goldman Sachs and Citigroup had previously collaborated with Alibaba in relation to the company’s USD 25 million Initial Public Offering in September 2014, evigo.com reports. According to Bidness Etc, cited by the source, not only is Alibaba aiming at India’s online retail firms as potential investment targets, but is also looking at companies belonging to a variety of segments such as business to business e-tailing, logistics , electronic payment services etc.
The Chinese company said that it will align with a mobile and analytics solution firm Globals, to create a startup incubator. The new company will focus on mobile commerce as well as mobile internet. The incubator will reportedly be in full function by June, 2015 and will run a one-year program during which five start-ups will be selected and will be provided initial funds.
In February, 2015 Alibaba bought a 25% stake in Indian mobile commerce company Paytm at around USD 550 million. Alibaba had also expressed interest in working out an investment deal with the country’s biggest ecommerce company Flipkart. Flipkart recently took down its mobile website in order to increase its focus on Mobile apps.
India’s ecommerce market is expected to be worth USD 43 billion by 2019. Out of this amount, online retail will account for USD 23 billion. Flipkart currently leads the ecommerce market in India. Alibaba is expected to disrupt the market in India. A day after Flipkart won USD 1 billion in funding, Amazon claimed to invest double that amount in India. This marks the importance of India’s market, where 300 million people are online out of a population of 1.2 billion.
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