NEWS
NEWS
Alibaba Group opens office in Malaysia
TECHNOLOGY conglomerate Alibaba Group opened its national office in Malaysia in June this year, marking a new chapter in the company’ s deepening strategic cooperation with Malaysia, which is the first Electronic World Trade Platform( eWTP) hub outside of China.
Located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, the company said the new office signifies Alibaba Group’ s continued endeavour to bolster the technology capability of Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises( SMEs) and young entrepreneurs, provide support and platforms to assist them to drive exports, as well as offer extensive training programmes to help them take advantage of digital innovations and trade opportunities.
“ Alibaba’ s focus is on three areas when we partner with Malaysia as well as other countries— to digitise our local partners and empower small businesses and young people to go global. Over the past 30 years, only large corporations have benefited from globalisation. Imagine if we can support 60 million small businesses around the world; this is Alibaba’ s vision of an inclusive and sustainable economy,” said Jack Ma, executive chairman and founder of Alibaba Group at the Alibaba office
From Left: Ambassador Bai Tian, China’ s Ambassador to Malaysia; Jack Ma, executive chairman and founder of Alibaba Group; Lim Guan Eng, Malaysia’ s Finance Minister, and Gobind Singh Deo, Malaysia’ s Minister of Communications & Multimedia.
opening ceremony in Malaysia’ s capital city.
“ Working closely with the Malaysian government, we will support and empower as many small businesses and young people as possible to use technology to become local kings and benefit from globalisation. This is the beginning of our story in Malaysia and I think Alibaba’ s story will be long and we will make this story together,” he added. Serving as a‘ one-stop solution centre’ for local businesses, the country office is designed to engage with existing local partners, help Malaysian businesses identify global cross-border trade opportunities, as well as to support the country’ s technology innovation through cloud computing services.
Malaysia’ s Minister of Finance, Lim Guan Eng, commented:“ We consider this a shining symbol of China-Malaysia friendship that is based on mutual respect and benefits that augurs well for the cooperation on the part of governments, businesses and people from both countries. We look forward to the opportunities this partnership will bring to Malaysian SMEs and I am confident that the eWTP, together with the Digital Free Trade Zone( DFTZ), will encourage more Malaysian SMEs to participate in e-commerce and increase their exports to other countries in Asia and beyond.”
In November last year, Alibaba launched its first international electronic trading hub( e-hub) in Malaysia under the eWTP initiative. ra
Google to invest more than $ 500m in JD. com
E-COMMERCE company JD. com, Inc and technology giant Google announced that, as part of a strategic partnership, the latter will invest US $ 550 million in cash in JD. com.
Both parties plan to collaborate on a range of strategic initiatives, including joint development of retail solutions in a range of regions around the world, including South-east Asia, the US and Europe. By applying JD’ s supply chain and logistics expertise and Google’ s technology strengths, the two companies aim to explore the creation of next-generation retail infrastructure solutions, with the goal of offering helpful, personalised and frictionless shopping experiences. JD also plans to make a selection of high-quality products available for sale through Google Shopping in multiple regions.
JD. com’ s chief strategy officer, Jianwen Liao, stated that the cooperation is a new chapter in its history.“ This partnership with Google opens up a broad range of possibilities to offer a superior retail experience to consumers throughout the world. This marks an important step in the process of modernising global retail,” he said.“ We are excited to partner with
JD. com and explore new solutions for retail ecosystems around the world to enable helpful, personalised and frictionless shopping experiences that give consumers the power to shop wherever and however they want,” said Philipp Schindler, chief business officer, Google.
Under the agreements, Google will receive 27,106,948 newly issued JD. com Class A ordinary shares at an issue price of US $ 20.29 per share, equivalent to US $ 40.58 per American Depositary Shares( ADS), based on the volume-weighted average trading price over the prior 10 trading days. ra
10 Retail Asia June / July 2018