Leading Chinese e-tailer Alibaba has announced it will open an office in Australia as part of its globalization plans, reports the Australian Financial Review.
The company, which listed on the New York Stock Exchanges in 2014, said it will open ifs first Australian office in Melbourne this year to boost two-way trade.
'We are going to engage in e-commerce going both ways, export to foreign markets, import to Australia,' Alibaba global president Michael Evans told the Financial Review. 'Secondly, we are going to build our payments business [Alipay], for people who live here, and for people who visit here.
'Number three, we are going to build a cloud business and that is designed to service the smaller companies. And the final piece, which might turn out to be the most important piece ... is the logistics infrastructure.'
Evans said that Alibaba already has around half million consumers in Australia, not all of which are Chinese-speaking, and while it already has some employees in Australia, it will look to open expand its local workforce and open additional offices as its builds its operations.
