For those who think that Amazon and Flipkart are expanding with an unbeaten speed, today we will give just a hint about how big China’s Alibaba empire is. Founded by Jack Ma, Alibaba, China biggest e-commerce company, has just sold more goods in 76 minutes than Amazon and Flipkart together had sold in all of 2017.
Looking at the numbers for the same, 76 minutes into Alibaba’s Singles Day sale, the company had sold goods with GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) of 91.2 billion RMB, or $13.1 billion. Through all of 2017, Flipkart and Myntra had together sold goods worth $7.5 billion, and Amazon India had managed to do the business of $5 billion. The sum of their sales of $12.5 billion was eclipsed by Alibaba in a little over an hour.
Alibaba Group even tweeted about this
At 1 hour, 16 minutes and 37 seconds, 2018 11.11 GMV surpasses that of 2015. pic.twitter.com/dKzZiAMtLm
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) November 10, 2018
Also Read: How Alibaba Is Trying To Beat Amazon & Walmart In Indian E-Commerce Market
The idea behind Singles Day
Singles Day was originally started by singles who wanted their own holiday to compete with Valentine’s Day and now it has become an important day not just for the company, but also the country. It is Alibaba’s flagship sale and was popularized by Alibaba as a shopping festival in 2009. Since then, this day symbolizes China’s e-commerce revolution.
International celebrities visit China to promote the event as this year singer Mariah Carey promoted the sale. In the past, celebrities including Maria Sharapova, David Beckham, Scarlett Johannsen and Kobe Bryant have all arrived in China to celebrate this sale.
Also Read: How China Is Quietly Dominating India’s Internet
Numbers from previous years
In 2016, it took an hour for Alibaba to make $5 billion of sales, and take it past the then-GMV of Flipkart at $4.5 billion. In 2017, Alibaba took half an hour to sell $7 billion of goods, which was more than the 2017 GMV of Flipkart at $6 billion. This year, Alibaba only took35 minutes to make $8.2 billion of sales, to go past Flipkart’s GMV of $7.5 billion.
These numbers reveal a lot of these about the 2 countries. Looking at the sales of Alibaba, Indian companies are still far behind in terms of business. The economic growth is also an important aspect if we want local companies to grow in India. Currently, India’s GDP per capita is $1983, whereas, China has more than 4 times higher at $8,643.
It’s too early to even say that today’s e-commerce companies will end up being India’s Alibaba. For now, Alibaba is showing the whole world what potential e-commerce space has to offer.
