To serve as its base for the New Zealand and Australian markets, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) has opened its headquarters in Melbourne. In attendance at the weekend event was Jack Ma, the group executive chairman of Alibaba, who said the headquarters will assist in opening up opportunities for businesses in New Zealand and Australia looking to sell to consumers in China.
“With a local office and expert team, Alibaba Group will help Australian and New Zealand businesses share their world-famous products with billions of customers around the world,” Ma said.
Global reach
The new office will provide support to about 400 businesses from New Zealand and about 1,300 business from Australia that sell on Alibaba’s online retail platforms, Tmall Global and Tmall. Attracting new merchants will also be part of the brief of the new office.
Alibaba also intends to pursue other business segments besides e-commerce from its new regional headquarters. The managing director of the new Melbourne office said that the Chinese retail giant intends to build the operating infrastructure with which regional businesses can use in their global expansion efforts. This includes logistics, online payments, and cloud computing.
Alibaba has recently turned its attention to the cloud. Earlier in January, the Chinese e-commerce titan signed with the International Olympic Committee a 12-year deal which will see the company offer e-commerce and cloud services.
Beyond e-commerce
Last year, a unit of Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud, unveiled a data center in Sydney. This was part of efforts Alibaba launched in a bid to expand its worldwide cloud footprint. Approximately $1 billion was set aside for this effort. The company also has plans to venture into other areas and segments such as digital entertainment and travel.
Alibaba is well-established in Australia. For instance, the business-to-business website of Alibaba has been operational in Australia for close to two decades now. And over 1000 physical stores in Australia and New Zealand accept Ant Financial’s Alipay e-wallet. Ant Financial is an affiliate of Alibaba.
In Friday’s trading session, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd edged downwards by 0.42 percent to close the day at $100.39 a share.
