E-commerce innovation at the center of an economic and geopolitical challenge: Amazon vs. Alibaba

Alibaba has indeed founded a consortium of companies bringing together some forty major Chinese shippers and carriers, Cainiao Smart Logistics Network, of which it holds the majority. This system controls more than two-thirds of the Chinese parcel market. Cainiao does most of its business in China but is expanding worldwide. Its goal is to enable suppliers to reach a foreign customer within three
days.
Amazon and Alibaba seek to facilitate exchanges between buyers and sellers in different countries. The Seattle-based company is particularly interested in the Chinese market where it has very little presence. However, consumers of the middle and upper class are attracted by certain products from abroad, branded products of course, but also products whose sanitary quality is considered safe, unlike local products. Here again, innovative, efficient and reliable international logistics are a key advantage.
Today Alibaba is shaking the giants eBay and Amazon, which are its direct competitors. In China, three quarters of online sales go through Alibaba platforms. In 2017, Alibaba achieved almost $ 23 billion in revenue. In total, the group claims more than 755 million active users and, of course, 90% of its business is in China. The story begins in 1999, when Jack Ma founded Alibaba.com. The bet was risky, because at the time, Internet was in its infancy in China. The platform connects SMEs and buyers, like eBay or Amazon. But, unlike the latter, Alibaba does not have a warehouse and the group does not sell anything itself, which makes its activity ten times more profitable. Today, Alibaba Group offers a multitude of platforms: Alibaba.com, but also Taobao.com for individuals (C2C), and Tmall for major brands (B2C), and services like Alipay, a sort of local PayPal.

However, nothing predisposed Jack Ma to become the emperor of the Web that he is today. Born on September 10, 1964 into a family of ping-tang artists -a traditional Chinese art mixing comedy, song and instruments -in Hangzhou, southwest of Shanghai, he was basically an English enthusiast. He is still a child when one of his teachers explains to him the importance of knowing how to speak this language. He improved his skills by listening to English-language radio broadcasts. Later, he made the guide for tourists who came to visit Hangzhou. When he was 24, he became an English teacher. Computer world was completely unknown world for him. But in 1995, a translation assignment for the agency he founded, brought him to Seattle. There, he discovered the wonderful world of the Web. On his return, he launched an online business directory, just months after the very first Chinese Internet connection, in 1994.
His first steps on the Web were difficult, his web business flopped, with Chinese companies seeing no point in being on an online directory when the Internet was used very little. But Jack Ma is known for his perseverance, considering that he likes to tell about his failures (he failed ten times to enter Harvard). In 1999, he convinced 18 friends to created Alibaba.com, in his small apartment in Hangzhou. As portals for the general public already existed, it focused on SMEs, a market which has the advantage of being already internationalized.
However, how did this successive entrepreneur, with no computer skills or degrees, become one of the bosses of the global web? First, he thinks outside the box all the time. Of course, that's not enough, but her positive attitude and persistence are key elements in making her ideas come true; for instance, in order to convince the Chinese to use Taobao, his e-commerce site between individuals, he created Alipay, a digital payment solution. Anyway, there is also a “dark side”, since he says that his success is due to the fact that he knew to be in love with the government without ever marrying it.