Alibaba shopping festival sold $2 billion in first 1 hour, 12 seconds

Alibaba said about $2 billion worth of goods were sold on the e-commerce giant’s websites within the first hour and 12 seconds of its annual shopping festival.

Alibaba did $3.1 billion in business in half a day during last year’s festival, equivalent to what it sold in the full day in 2012. Half of the $2 billion gross merchandise volume this year was sold within the first 18 minutes after the “11.11 Shopping Festival” opened, the company said.

The sale, which the company claims is the world’s biggest 24-hour online sale, began in 2009 when 27 merchants on the company’s Tmall.com site offered deep discounts to boost sales during an otherwise weak period.

This year’s festival is global, reaching shoppers in more than 200 countries, the company said.

Last week,  Alibaba ‘s e-commerce and mobile businesses surged in the September quarter , far outpacing its rivals’ and glossing over weakening margins and decelerating earnings growth.

Its shares edged as much as 3 percent higher to a record high after the Chinese e-commerce company reported a brisk 49 percent rise in the gross value of merchandise sold. Revenue rose 53.7 percent in the three months ending in September, dwarfing Amazon.com’s 20 percent growth over the same period.

The company indicated that its shopping spree, in which it has spent more than $6 billion since the beginning of the year, might not be ending yet as it aims to increase its user base. Revenue totalled $2.74 billion, versus expected sales of $2.7 billion, its fastest growth in three quarters.

With inputs from Reuters