Alibaba plans to enter Indian e-commerce market this year

Alibaba Group – China’s largest eCommerce company is planning to enter the Indian sub-continent later this year to expand its online marketplace operations. In order to establish a proper base in the country, Alibaba seeking partnerships with India's leading business groups including Tata Sons Limited. 

“We are planning to enter the e-commerce business in India in 2016. We have been exploring very carefully the e-commerce opportunity in this country, which we think is very exciting on the backdrop of Digital India,” said J. Michael Evans, President - Alibaba Group after a meeting with the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad 

“We hope Alibaba will come and have a good footprint in India, including the expanding business of e-commerce (for which) they are exploring the possibility. I have said very clearly that Alibaba is quite free to come and expand its footprint in India.” said Prasad, commenting after the meeting. 

Alibaba recently secured a loan of $3 billion. While the company has not revealed where it will invest the money, the most obvious use seems that it will invest in eCommerce and media startups, as well as setiing base in India.

According to reports from Morgan Stanley, the total Indian eCommerce- market size is estimated to grow to $159 billion by 2020, making it the fastest growing eCommerce market globally from the current $16 billion valuation. Alibaba is planning to reap the benefits of the evident upcoming boom either as a single entity or through collborations with existing eCommerce platforms Snapdal and Paytm where it invested last year.  

" We have investments in both payments and e-commerce already and over the course of next year we will figure about exactly what our strategy is,” Evans added. 

Evans along with K. Guru Gowrappan, Alibaba's Global Managing Director, also met Tata Group's Chairman Cyrus Mistry recently to discuss the feasibility of such combined endeavor, which would disrupt and heat up the competition in the online retailing market in the country that is ruled by Amazon, Flipkart, eBay and Snapdeal.

The news comes at a time when China's economy, which is the second largest in to world, is facing slowdown.

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