Alibaba and Suning Commerce Group Limited announced that they have entered into strategic alliance at 4pm (GMT+8) yesterday afternoon.
Alibaba will invest approximately 28 billion yuan (US$4.6 billion), for a 19.99% stake in Suning, which is going to make Alibaba the second largest shareholder in Suning. The two companies will expand comprehensive cooperation in the near future, providing both Chinese and international consumers with more holistic customer service, and will also play a leading role in bringing a new transformation to the retail industry.
Suning has more than 1600 stores covering over 700 cities of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Japan and its e-commerce platform, Suning.com ranks among top three Chinese B2C companies.
In H1 2015, China online retail market reached RMB 1645.9 billion (USD 265.126 billion) with a YoY growth of 39.1%. According to data of China National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail value of social consumer goods accounted for RMB 14157.7 billion (USD 2280.557 billion) in H1 2015, with an increase of 10.4% (10.5% if price factors excluding) year on year,0.2 percentage points lower than last year.
Read more: China Online Shopping Accounted for over 10% of Total Retail in Q1 2015