Alibaba’s Jack Ma meets Modi, offers SME boost

Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of e-commerce major, Alibaba Group, met India’s Prime Minister Modi to discuss how Alibaba can help empower small businesses in this country. With an aim to expand Alibaba.com globally, this was his second visit to India in the last four months.

During his last visit in November 2014, he couldn’t meet Mr Modi due to time constrains. But this time the meeting proved to be quite productive. After the meeting the prime minister tweeted, “had a very good meeting with Jack Ma.” In another tweet, Alibaba group said, “Jack meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss how Alibaba can help empower small businesses in India.”

Ever since its inception in 1999 in Hangzhou, the capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, Alibaba has gone on to become the world’s largest online and mobile ecommerce company by gross merchandise value (GMV). The company aims to expand its reach globally, and Ma’s visit to India has been one of the key’s strategies to make it big in India.

During his visit last year, Ma had said that he was keen to invest funds in the Indian market and work with Indian technology entrepreneurs, as he thought internet could bring a revolution in the country’s future. Earlier in September 2014, Alibaba was in talks with India’s ecommerce major Snapdeal.com to launch its base in India.

Owned by China’s richest man with a fortune of about $24.4 billion, Alibaba.com hosts a significant number of Indian vendors selling a wide array of goods on its portal, starting from spices, tea, to chocolates. Over the next three years Alibaba aims to create more small businesses and use their service to expand their footprints in India and worldwide.

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