AA visits Asia's largest e-commerce portal "alibaba.com" headquarters

HANGZHOU

Asia's biggest online commercial platform "alibaba.com" headquarters has opened its doors to AA.

World's one of the largest online commerce portal "alibaba" is different from its equals and its formed from many sub-groups. It holds the 80 percent of the Chinese market.
Director of global marketing and developing, Timothy Keung replied AA's questions at the corporate headquarters of alibaba in HangZhou in China.
Keung who is responsible from the all international operations of the group told AA how the firm became a world giant in 13 years of time, their customers in Turkey and how the global economic crises affected the industry.
The firm has 29.4 million registered members worldwide who e-commerce from 240 different regions of the globe. 
There are 2.5 million supplier and sellers in the English language internet based business.
The most interesting feature of the portal is that millions of exporters and importers from all around the world come together online over the portal and immediately supply seekers with products without any brokers. 
The alibaba.com portal has 5,900 products from 46 different sectors and even though the economic recession shook most of the businesses, they keep trading online and growing bigger every other day.
The world giant firm, not producing but only "being the matchmaker of the world's businesses" hires more than 24 thousand people from various nations worldwide.
8 thousand people work in the corporate headquarters in the Chinese town of HangZhou.
In the gigantic campus of alibaba in HangZhou, when the website's user searches for a product, the giant screens in the campus track the connection point of the user over a map, 24 hours a day.
Firm's officials name "internet" as new world's substructure and underline that the world cannot be imagined without internet and mobile networks anymore so they state that they build their future according to this culture.
-"taobao.com provide interesting products and services"-
Asia's biggest and world's 20th biggest shopping portal the "taobao.com" is also owned by "alibaba.com". The firm is the only monopoly in the region by bringing e-commerce together with companies and e-shoppers with individual users.
Asia-wide known and the region's largest online shopping portal "taobao" has a large trade volume. This portal is different from alibaba and it shops from customer to customer and it has features which belong to China.
The portal includes 800 million product types and there are interesting independent shops as well.
There are shops which provides friends or family members for special days, and there are even shops which provide you people to snap at over the phone when you are angry.
Despite the economic crisis taobao.com keeps growing and when the economy slows down it grows faster. Officials state that shopping portals take consumers' attention when the economic recession start so people head towards cheap products.
Head of the strategy department of Alibaba Group, Professor Dr. Zing Ming underlines that the online commerce and trading just starts and e-commerce is a revolution for China.
"In the rural areas of China, people sell and buy over the mobile phones. And now, through Taobao, everybody has a shopping mall in their pockets," says Zing and adds that people leave the era of industry in behind and go for the era of informatics.
Many businesses in China and in the world survived the economic crisis and kept growing under favour of e-commerce. This situation also enlarged the e-commerce and shopping suppliers.
Keung states that firstly it has to be understood what "alibaba.com" stands for. He said that the main idea of the portal is to bring the customers of the business world together and adds that it is the toughest part of it and says, "to find the trade partner is the hardest section of the business."
Keung said that the companies who commerce between each other is cross-border trades which brings complicated chain of proceedings.
Keung also adds that it will consume their time to track the trade volume of their system and says that they are "the head of the chain", and their mission is to bring sides together and help them finding the right business partner.

"Turkish users are unique to us"
Keung clarified that they have high number of members from Turkey and he described suppliers and customers in Turkey as "unique and incomparable."
Director Keung stressed that Turkish customers buy and sell a lot and called Turkish suppliers and customers as "incomparable" and Turkey's positioning as "unique" because of its geopolitics location.
He highlighted that when he goes to Turkey he hold meetings with Turkish customers and expressed that they have Turkish customers who have been working with their firm for 8 to 10 years. He said that Turkish customers show at the meetings that they are satisfied with the portal.
Timothy Keung said that Turkish customers buy and sell at the same time and said, "when we compare it with other countries, it makes Turkey "incomparable"."
Keung said that that is why they see Turkey as a "strategic country" and continued saying, "We have two reasons for it. Firstly, where Turkey is located, its positioning between East and West. The second reason is that Turkish liability. Turkish both supply and sell. They take part in the every operation of the portal."
Keung underlined that Turkey is one of the "healthy and rapidly growing country" between "alibaba.com" portal and they have 413 thousand members from Turkey. He stressed that from Turkey each month approximately 6 thousand 300 new members joined their portal.
Keung answer the questions of Turkey's importation and exportation rate via Alibaba Group and he said that the best sales from Turkey is the machinery sector.
Timothy Keung stated that machinery sector is being followed with the food industry, construction materials, agricultural goods, textiles, leather and chemical products.
Asking Kueng how "alibaba.com" grew this quickly and what was the breaking point of it, he said, "We are lucky. We were at the right place at the right time. China is the world's production base. So we are at the right place. When it comes to right time, internet is on rise. These both elements gave us a chance to bring out incredible stuff and we took advantage from it."

Reporting by Ali Ihsan Cam / Tevfik Durul