Daniel Zhang has only just been appointed CEO of Alibaba, but already he’s planning big things for the e-commerce firm, with a global expansion certainly in the works.
Payment Eye last week reported that Daniel Zhang is to replace Johnathan Lu as CEO of Alibaba.
One of the first tasks for Zhang was to speak to company employees yesterday and outline what the future holds for the digital group in the coming years. Zhang was speaking at the company-wide strategy session at Alibaba’s Hangzhou campus.
Official Alibaba news source Alizila revealed what Zhang has in store for Alibaba.
‘‘We must absolutely globalize. We will organize a global team and adopt global thinking to manage the business, and achieve the goal of ‘global buy and global sell,’’ said Zhang.
Alibaba already have a large presence outside of China, with companies such as AliExpress, which is designed to sell Chinese goods around the world, and Tmall Global who advise foreign brands enter the Chinese market.
Zhang also set his employees a significant target at the session. By 2020, Zhang wants Alibaba to generate $1trillion in annual GMV via its e-commerce marketplaces.
‘‘When we face issues like counterfeit goods and brushing, are we able to step up and improve our market-monitoring mechanisms and to perfect them in order to effectively combat these harmful products on our platforms? In order to reach our goal of $1 trillion in GMV, we need to transform our platform into a high-quality, thriving platform,’’ continued Zhang.
Zhang’s vision to globalise Alibaba most likely stems from Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, who earlier in the year revealed his desire to sell goods to merchants all over the world.
‘‘The WTO was great, past century, but WTO was helping big companies to sell things across the nations. Today the Internet can help small businesses sell things cross the oceans, cross the nations. And I hope that we can serve 2 billion consumers, we can help 10 million small businesses outside China,’’ stated Ma at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
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