Alibaba challenger Pinduoduo is bringing imported goods to rural homes

Pinduoduo, the latest challenger to China’s ecommerce dominators Alibaba and JD.com, wants to bring affordable, imported items to shoppers in China’s smaller cities and rural areas. The three-year-old Tencent-backed ecommerce upstart is recruiting importers to set up shop on its marketplace, shows a message on its website. The business is known for offering cheap, sometimes […]

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Alibaba takes an 8% stake in Tencent-backed anime streaming site Bilibili

Ecommerce giant Alibaba is continuing its push into the world of youth culture after it scooped up an 8 percent stake in anime streaming and game publishing company Bilibili. According to a securities filing on Thursday, Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace has acquired about 24 million shares in Bilibili, the Shanghai-based firm that has captured 93 million monthly users […]

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Alibaba’s alternative to the app store reaches 230M daily users

WeChat isn’t the only one doubling down on lite apps. Ever since China’s messaging titan introduced “mini programs” two years ago, a handful of its peers including Alibaba and Baidu have followed with their own manifestations. Alipay, the payments solution affiliated with China’s ecommerce juggernaut Alibaba, today announced it surpassed 230 million daily active users and […]

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Indonesia e-commerce leader Tokopedia raises $1.1B from Alibaba and SoftBank’s Vision Fund

Indonesia-based e-commerce firm Tokopedia is the latest startup to enter the Vision Fund after it raised $1.1 billion Series G round led by the SoftBank megafund and Alibaba. SoftBank and Alibaba are existing investors in the business — the Chinese e-commerce giant led a $1.1 billion round last year, while SoftBank recently transitioned its shareholding […]

View More Indonesia e-commerce leader Tokopedia raises $1.1B from Alibaba and SoftBank’s Vision Fund

Mogu’s long journey: From rejecting Alibaba’s advances to US IPO

Mogu, a Tencent-backed service that offers fashion content and products to young women, has joined a string of Chinese tech companies pressing ahead to sell their shares through initial public offerings in the U.S. before year’s end. Mogu priced its sale at $14 per share on Wednesday, toward the lower end of a marketed range. […]

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Alibaba rival JD sees Singles’ Day revenue jump 27% thanks to offline push

Alibaba may have pioneered the concept of Singles’ Day, the world’s largest shopping day based on sales, but it very much not the only e-commerce giant involved. JD.com, Alibaba’s biggest rival in China, just announced that it sold RMB 159.8 billion ($23 billion) in goods for its Singles’ Day campaign. Unlike Alibaba, which racked up $31 billion […]

View More Alibaba rival JD sees Singles’ Day revenue jump 27% thanks to offline push

Starbucks partners with Alibaba on coffee delivery to boost China business

Starbucks is palling up with Alibaba as it seeks to rediscover growth for its business in China. China has been a bright spot for some time for the U.S. coffee giant, but lately it has struggled to maintain growth — its China business dragged on its Q3 financials — and it is up against some […]

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The incredible rise of Pinduoduo, China’s newest force in e-commerce

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. From Alibaba to JD, China is not short of e-commerce powerhouses. Although the country’s e-commerce market is highly consolidated, it’s not impossible for startup teams to crack this market as long as they are solving the right problems for […]

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Alibaba boosts its offline reach with $2B+ investment in outdoor digital marketing firm

Alibaba is investing big bucks into offline distribution. The Chinese e-commerce giant has forked out $2.23 billion in exchange for a sizeable piece of Focus Media, a Shanghai-based company that operates outdoor digital advertising screens across China, Singapore and Hong Kong, according to a U.S. filing. The deal itself is broken up into a few pieces. Alibaba itself […]

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Alibaba blames politics as Taobao retains place on US government naughty list

 It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for Alibaba in the U.S.. First affiliate Ant Financial’s proposed acquisition of MoneyGram collapsed due to objections from the U.S. government, now its Taobao service has the dubious honor of again featuring on the USTR (United States Trade Representative) naughty list. Taobao, Alibaba’s hugely popular marketplace, is among 25… Read More

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Please enjoy Pharrell’s very cringeworthy song to celebrate China’s biggest shopping day

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As they say, everyone has a price.

Pharrell co-wrote and performed a new song in China to celebrate Singles’ Day — the world’s biggest shopping holiday.

This year, Chinese shoppers spent $25 billion on Alibaba’s Taobao site in just 24 hours, blowing events like Black Friday completely out of the water.

Pharrell and his co-performer, Chinese-Canadian singer Kris Wu, were onstage for Alibaba’s huge extravaganza celebrating the shopping day. 

There’s no way any description could do this song justice, so you’ll have to just listen for yourself: Read more…

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View More Please enjoy Pharrell’s very cringeworthy song to celebrate China’s biggest shopping day