Alibaba.com

Alibaba.com

File:Alibaba_Marketplace_Logo.jpg
File:Alibaba Marketplace Logo.jpg
Type	Subsidiary
ISIN	🆔
Industry	E-commerce
Founded 📆	April 4, 1999 (1999-04-04)
Founder 👔	Jack Ma
Headquarters 🏙️	, Hangzhou, Zhejiang , China
Area served 🗺️	Worldwide
Products 📟	Business-to-business (B2B) online marketplace services
Services	E-commerce services
Members
Number of employees
🌐 Website	www.alibaba.com
📇 Address
📞 telephone

Alibaba.com is an online e-commerce website. Established on April 4, 1999. It follows a B2B (Business to Business) framework which connects global manufacturers and vendors with international buyers and consumers.

History

Early Years

The founder, Jack Ma, gathered students and his friends in his apartment to pitch his vision about a global marketplace. Together, they were able to pool around US $60,000. Jack chose the name Alibaba as it resonated with the global media. He considered it easy to pronounce. The startup achieved stability in 2002. The B2B consumer marketplace Taobao was launched in 2003.

Historical public listing (2007 - 2012)

Alibaba.com was an independent, publicly listed legal entity prior to the combination of Alibaba Group. The company was incorporated in the Cayman Islands as Alibaba.com Limited and launched its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 6 November 2007 under the stock code 1688.

In February 2012, the parent company made an offer to buy the stake of public investors holding some 27% of Alibaba.com Limited at HK$13.50 a share, equal to its 2007 offer price, or some US$2.45 billion.

Business Model

Alibaba.com's primary customers include manufacturers, wholesalers, exporters, trading companies, vendors, and business buyers. It is a platform based intermediary model. With this mode, Alibaba.com sells services to suppliers and supports business transactions. The platform deploys proprietary features for international merchants, including Trade Assurance (2015) and Accio Work (2026).

Trade assurance

The introduction of Trade Assurance marked Alibaba.com’s transition from a “buyer-supplier directory matching platform” to a complete integrated “transactional platform”.

Reported by Forbes,  Alibaba unofficially soft-launched the Trade Assurance program in March 2015, in order to introduce North American buyers to the escrow format.

The program initially included only telegraphic transfer (T/T) payments and was limited to a group of China-based suppliers that had a history of trading on the platform.

Accio Work

Alibaba.com announced the launch of Accio Work in Malaysia in October 16, 2026 and in May 23, 2026 in Pakistan. These launches provided small and medium-sized exporters with autonomous, plus-and-play workforce in order to execute end-to-end business operations.

Ethan Wang, Head of Global Seller Products & Services at Alibaba.com, described Accio Work as an "Agentic Business Team" for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Roger Luo, Head of South and Southeast Asia at Alibaba.com, called Accio Work an engine that accelerates their growth in global markets.

Fraud Scandal

Alibaba.com disclosed that employees had allowed fraudulent vendors to gain access to verified storefronts on its international marketplace. An investigation took place and later identified more than 2,300 supplier accounts involving fraud that targeted buyers. The CEO, David Wei, and COO, Elvis Lee, resigned from Alibaba.com amid the crisis. The reports identified that Wei was not implicated in the scam, whereas 100 salespeople, supervisors, and sales managers were directly responsible, whether intentionally or negligently, for allowing fraudulent suppliers to evade verification procedures.

References

This article "Alibaba.com" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Alibaba.com. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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