Executive Summary

The Coresight Research team was in Hangzhou, China, September 23-24 for Alibaba Group’s annual two-day investor event. These are the key insights from day two:

• Cloud and technology play essential roles in Alibaba’s “digital economy.” Supported by the company’s technology infrastructure, including machine learning, data computing, robots and fintech, Alibaba developed databases and systems to support business unit and client business needs.
• Alibaba just closed a deal to acquire a 33% share of Ant Financial. By adding Ant Financial’s 900 million annual active users, the total number of Alibaba digital economy users will reach 960 million in China.
• The company has adopted a multi-brand strategy to globalization: It has integrated international infrastructure of commerce, logistics and payment platforms, and will continue to grow its international business. Alibaba said it now has 130 million annual active consumers outside China.
• Alibaba thinks online and offline retail cannot be distinguished: Offline retailers need to digitalize their businesses, which also helps retailers glean value from data insights.