For most people, Alibaba remains a mystery; such that its upcoming IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, foreseen as the biggest by market value ever, has largely failed to excite small investors.
Aside from the US parochialism, why would Americans ignore this company? It was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, a man described by many as a light bulb, both for his physiognomy and his brilliance, and is now the world’s biggest online retailer, with three main pages (Alibaba.com, Taobao, and Tmall), hundreds of millions of users, millions of traders and businesses of all types, 22,000 employees, and a turnover of $248 million, 80 percent of the Chinese ebusiness market.
This is a company with 231 million regular customers, with 136 million smartphone users, and that has changed the lives of millions of Chinese living in remote corners of this vast country thanks to Taobao, the Chinese equivalent to eBay. To get an idea of this company’s size we would need to combine Amazon with eBay.
Once it goes public, Alibaba will become one of the biggest companies in the world: the IPO has been registered at the SEC with a worth of $1 billion, but the banks put valuation expectations closer to twenty times that sum. Asside from Taobao and Alibaba.com (B2B), the company also includes Tmall (B2C), Juhuasuan (offers and discounts), eTao (a price comparison search engine), Aliplay…
