What you need to know
Alibaba Group is investing US$177 million in Indian online retail giant Paytm E-Commerce. This will expand the Chinese company’s operations in India, the world’s sixth-largest economy. It will mark the second major regional expansion for Alibaba since April last year. Alibaba just invested in in Southeast Asian e-commerce services provider Lazada Group. Alibaba will get a 36% stake in Paytm E-Commerce. Ant Financial, which is also an investor in One97, and Alibaba will have more than a 60 per cent interest in the Paytm e-commerce business.
Why this is important
News of the investment came just after Paytm E-Commerce launched a new online marketplace called Paytm Mall, which is similar to Alibaba’s B2C platform Tmall.com.
The Paytm Mall platform will provide customers access to 68 million products sold by 140,000 online merchants. Alibaba’s expansion into India’s fast-growing e-commerce market will likely support cross-border retail e-commerce purchases by consumers in mainland China.