Alibaba Group is eyeing more expansions and more investments in the Philippines in the coming years, although detailed plans remain under wraps.
Alibaba already owns Lazada.com, one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the Philippines after Alibaba bought a controlling stake in Lazada back in 2016.
Selina Yuan, president for international business at Alibaba, said the Philippines remains a “very important” market for Alibaba, although the Chinese technology firm is relatively new in the local market.
Yuan said Alibaba will be pouring investments on training and “technical enablement” of local personnel and partners.
Alibaba already trained some 5,000 Filipinos and this will be continued because the Philippines “has a lot of talents,” Yuan said.
The executive said on the corporate front, Alibaba plans to engage more customers and enterprise partners, hopefully after the Covid-10 pandemic subsides.
Speaking of enterprises, Yuan said Alibaba will pitch Alibaba Cloud, the company’s newest cloud service. The executive said currently, Alibaba cloud is the backbone of the group’s “economy” including key Alibaba products and services including Alipay, its retail and wholesale units such as digital media, its marketing units,, and logistics, among others.
Allen Guo, country manager for Alibaba in the Philippines, said the company plans to train thousands till the end of 2023. The training will be in line with Alibaba Cloud, and that the company will to train local “certified clouders.”
Echoing Yuan, Guo said Alibaba has “big expectation” next year, after a projected recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Guo, in a presentation, noted that the Philippines’ financial and technology sectors remain “bright economic stars,” after the sectors contributed positive GDP contributions.
In the Asian region, Yuan said Alibaba will continue to push for its services.
Citing a recent report, Yuan said in the whole of Asia, the 15- to 35 year-old category make up 50% of Alibaba users, while 70% of the population is into online shopping. Asia also has a 75% Internet penetration, making it a huge digital innovation “warehouse.”
Alibaba is biggest cloud user in Asia, Yuan said, noting that its cloud services powered Alibaba’s own “11.11 Global Shopping Festival,” which is deemed “as the biggest online shopping festival in the world.
One figure that stood out, according to Alibaba, is that 583,000 transactions per second recorded at one point in November 11, 2020.
