Early this week, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) opened new operations offices in Moscow, which were welcomed as the company’s first offices in Russia.
The decision will give Alibaba capacity to expand and monitor its operations in the region, thus giving the company an opportunity to increase its capacity. These measures will allow the company to gain more competitive strength against its top competitors such as Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY).The two other competitors already have operations in the country.
Sources reveal that Alibaba has launched the subsidiary to facilitate proper relations with the Russian government organizations. The offices were launched under www.alibaba.com.ru. The URL will allow for easier operations according to Mark Zavadsky, who is one of Alibaba’s executives.
Alibaba’s Chinese division owns three e-commerce websites in the country. The websites are Taobao, Tmall, and Aliexpress and are part of the company’s strategy to enhance profitability. Aliexpress is operational in Russia. However, the new offices will facilitate the speedy growth Alibaba’s territory in Russia. Aliexpress will play a major role in facilitating the parent company’s mission because it is the most common e-commerce website in the country.
In the second half of 2004, the website registered an average 15.6 million users every month. This is a huge advantage over eBay and Amazon, who register a monthly average of 3.7 million and 1.7 million users respectively according to Kommersant.
Amazon and eBay both identify that Alibaba is no longer an underdog but is rather threat to look out for. The company successfully took over eBay’s consumer to consumer market and managed to exceed eBay’s sales after some years.
The company’s strategy has been working in its favor as the firm pushes to beat the giants in the highly competitive e-commerce industry. In the third quarter of 2014, the company successfully jumped on the NYSE listing and is currently making plans to acquire 25% ownership in an Indian e-commerce firm known as Paymt.
