Alibaba to extend its new sales channels to South-East Asia

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Monday said it is launching new sales channels in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan as China’s deep-pocketed e-commerce firms vie for new users in the region. The new service, branded TmallWorld, will allow overseas Chinese users to buy goods from Alibaba’s Tmall, its popular brand-to-consumer retail site, the company said in a statement. “Alibaba will provide end-to-end solutions including logistics, payment, and localization support catering to each local market’s needs,” the statement said. Alibaba Groups has been quite active within India as well. Earlier this year, Alibaba had invested Rs 17,000 crore in an Indian e-commerce website called **Paytm** . The big picture is that the Indian electronic commerce market is expected to be worth $60 billion by 2020. It’s already big, worth $16 billion in 2016 and growing at a fast clip of 45 percent annually. Moreover, Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing wing of the Alibaba Group had announced to open its two data centres in Jakarta and India by March 31st next year. It had partnered with **TATA telecommunications** on June 10, to connect Alibaba Cloud’s “ExpressConnect” via Tata Communications’ “IZO Private Connect” service. It intends to increase its computing resources which would provide great support to small and medium enterprises. Reuters