China’s Alibaba Opens Operations In Russia

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has opened an office in Russia. The company is already present in the country via its online store AliExpress, which is the most popular online shop in Russia, International Business Times Reports.

“Alibaba Group has established a new company in Russia in order to further expand our business and support partners, and to facilitate interaction with the state authorities of Russia,” Mark Zavadsky, AliExpress Business Development Director in Russia and the CIS told Kommersant today.

“AliExpress reached 15.6 million customers a month in the second half of 2014, way ahead of other key market players, eBay and Amazon, who had just 3.7 million and 1.4 million customers a month, respectively,” RT reports.

Globally the number of active customers using Alibaba Group services totaled 350 million people in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015. Alibaba Group’s revenue for the period reached $12.2 billion with net profit of $3.9 billion.

Alibaba conducted the world’s largest-ever IPO in September last year, raising almost $25 billion. The capitalization of the company as of June 1 amounted to $222.9 billion.

China’s e-commerce model has been very successful so far and the retail market is expected to be worth $10.3 trillion by 2018, compared to the $5 trillion in sales projected for North America.