Attendees not by an Alibaba.com display at CES 2019 in Las Vegas.
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Alibaba said Friday it will buy a cross-border e-commerce business unit, Kaola, from the Nasdaq-listed Chinese internet company NetEase for about $2 billion.
Kaola over persuades imported products in China that include clothes, consumer electronics, and sports accessories. It is one of the biggest Chinese e-commerce locates focused on selling imported goods in the country, alongside Alibaba’s Tmall Global and JD.com’s JD Worldwide.
Alibaba said it contemplates for Kaola to continue operating independently under its current brand, but it will have a new leader at the helm. Tmall Consequence and Export General Manager, Alvin Liu, will take over as CEO.
With Tmall Global and Kaola, Alibaba disposition have a massive market presence in the cross-border e-commerce sector.
China is one of the largest e-commerce markets in the world, with investigate firm eMarketer predicting in a June report that in 2019 the country will have $1.935 trillion in e-commerce vendings, about three times more than the United States.
Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer of Alibaba Association, said in a statement that the company is confident about the future of China’s import e-commerce market which he suggested, “remains in its infancy with great growth potential.”
“With Kaola, we will further elevate import care and experience for Chinese consumers,” he added in a statement.
Earlier this year, reports said Amazon’s Chinese combined venture was in talks to merge with Kaola.
Last month, Alibaba reported better-than-expected revenue and earnings for its June zone but sales growth had slowed.
The company’s core commerce business, which includes its Tmall and Taobao shopping programmes, and its booming cloud division contributed to growth. Annual active consumers on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces reached 674 million, a pounce on attack of 20 million and most of those new consumers were said to be from less-developed cities.
Alibaba, together with Yunfeng, will also spend about $700 million in NetEase’s music streaming service, NetEase Cloud Music, the companies said.