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Alibaba Along with Mail.ru Launches a New Joint Venture

12Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

Alibaba Along with Mail.ru Launches a New Joint Venture

China’s e-commerce major Alibaba and Russia’s internet company Mail.ru have announced that they have entered into a deal to launch a joint venture in Russia and former Soviet countries. The new venture will be called AliExpress Russia, taking after the name of an existing Alibaba platform. The two groups and the Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF along with telecom operator MegaFon, announced the inauguration of "a new strategic partnership" as Russia hosts an economic forum in the far eastern city of Vladivostok. Alibaba and Mail.ru said in a statement this would "integrate Russia's key consumer internet and e-commerce platforms and launch a leading social commerce joint venture in Russia and the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States)." According to the statement, the new compan...

Alibaba’s Jack Ma to Step Down & Focus on Philanthropy

8Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

Alibaba’s Jack Ma to Step Down & Focus on Philanthropy

Jack Ma, the founder of the largest Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba Group is reportedly stepping down from the position of executive chairman of the company from Monday, marking the end of an era. However, one of the richest men in China, Jack Ma has stated that he will remain on Alibaba's board of directors. The primary motive of stepping down from his position is that he has planned to pursue philanthropy in education. “I love education,” he said. Ma planned to retire and is willing to dedicate more of his time and fortune to philanthropy with the creation of a foundation in his own name focused on education, following in the footsteps of billionaire Bill Gates. "There's a lot of things I can learn from Bill Gates," Jack Ma said. "I can never be as rich, but one thing I can do...

China’s Fashion Retailer Shein to Expand to Smaller Regions in India

6Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

China’s Fashion Retailer Shein to Expand to Smaller Regions in India

China’s fashion e-commerce player Shein has become quite popular in India just within one year of its presence. For the company, India has emerged as an important market with its mobile app crossing 5 million downloads. The fashion retailer at present delivers to over 15,000 pin codes in tier-I and II cities in India and is now further planning to focus on smaller towns by expanding its services beyond western fashion. “India is a very important market for us and we think there is a huge opportunity in the tier-III and IV towns,” said Malcolm Yam, general manager at Shein India. “This is why we have started partnering with local designers to create fusion and Indo-western outfits for the Indian audience.” Shein has been successful in more than tripling its business revenue in India fo...

6Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

China’s Alibaba Group Eyeing Valuable Acquisition in India

China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is eyeing considerable investments in India through valuable acquisitions. The company is looking to buy out content platforms across print, video and web to increase its reach within the country. The e-commerce major stated that it looks upon user data privacy and security with seriousness, and therefore stores most of the user information within servers in India. "India is one of the most important overseas markets for UCWeb. Of the 430 million users that we have on our browser globally, a large chunk of 130 million users come from India," Shunyan Zhu, president of the company said. A mobile browser and content platform called the UCWeb is operated by the Alibaba Group. Due to the expansion in the usage of online browsing platforms, it has now ...

Meituan-Dianping Aims to Raise $4.4 billion from IPO

5Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Market

Meituan-Dianping Aims to Raise $4.4 billion from IPO

China’s food delivery and restaurant review major Meituan-Dianping said it aims to raise up to $4.4 billion (roughly Rs. 31,400 crores) for its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong. Instead of a not-so-effective response to other recent IPOs in the city, the company is planning to go public. With the IPO, Meituan will offer 480.27 million new shares at a range of HK$60 ($7.64) to HK$72 apiece. The company stated that they are making losses and also said that it could not guarantee profitability in future despite of having hundreds of millions of users on its platform. Talking about the company, Meituan.com was founded in 2010 by CEO Wang Xing and was merged with comment-rating platform Dianping Holdings in 2015. The company has been backed by internet giant Tencent and provi...

China’s Maoyan Weiying to File an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

4Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Market

China’s Maoyan Weiying to File an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

China’s largest online movie ticketing service Maoyan Weiying reportedly filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The Tencent-backed company, however, has yet not disclosed that when the IPO will be or other valuation details. But, according to the earlier reports of this year, Maoyan aims to raise up to $1 billion. This move has come soon after another Tencent investment, Meituan-Dianping, is preparing for its own debut (Meituan is also one of Maoyan’s investors). Both Meituan and Maoyan are an important part of Tencent’s online-to-offline services rivalry with Alibaba. Meituan holds the number one market share for online services in China in terms of market volume. Similarly, Maoyan is the largest online movie ticketing app service in China. It...

USA Accuses China of Using Fake LinkedIn Accounts

3Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

USA

USA Accuses China of Using Fake LinkedIn Accounts

The top spy catcher of the United States has announced that Chinese intelligence agencies are using fake LinkedIn accounts for the purpose of recruiting Americans with access to government and commercial secrets. They have stated that the company should shut them down. The U.S. counter-intelligence chief, William Evanina has accused China of using fake LinkedIn accounts to carry out the "super aggressive" spy campaign. He told that the Chinese campaign includes contacting thousands of LinkedIn members at a time. However, he refused to tell the number of fake accounts U.S. intelligence had discovered, the number of Americans may have been contacted and also the number of success China has had in the recruitment drive. "I recently saw that Twitter is cancelling, I don't know, millions of...

JD.com’s CEO Richard Liu Arrested Against Sexual Misconduct

3Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

JD.com’s CEO Richard Liu Arrested Against Sexual Misconduct

Chinese billionaire Richard Liu who founded the one of the largest Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com was reportedly arrested by Minneapolis police Friday night. He was suspicious of criminal sexual misconduct. However, he was released later stating that he was falsely accused. The Minneapolis Police Department said the investigation remained active and would not confirm details of the arrest against the CEO, Liu. "The individual was arrested Friday evening and released Saturday afternoon. He was released pending formal complaint," Public Information Officer John Elder stated. JD.com is China’s second-largest online shopping platform after Alibaba. Liu founded the venture about two decades ago. The company has been listed on the Nasdaq since 2014 and has reached to around $45 billion...

25Aug By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

Google Making Efforts to Enter China With a Subsidary of Waymo

The popular technology company Alphabet Inc. is putting good efforts to build a presence in China with a new subsidiary of Waymo based in Shanghai. Waymo is one of the world's leading autonomous car designers. The company has claimed that it has set up a legal entity in the country and has people working there, however, it hasn't commented on its further plans. This move seems to be a great effort by Google to move to China where many of its Google services are blocked. However, the autonomous industry is growing so rapidly that it makes sense for Alphabet to get in as early as possible. It has also been reported that the company might not bring in an autonomous ride-hailing service in China, however, it will be focusing on logistics consulting, supply chain, and autonomous drivin...

China’s HOMTOM Debuts Indian Smartphone Market with Three New Devices

25Aug By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

China’s HOMTOM Debuts Indian Smartphone Market with Three New Devices

China-based smartphone maker HOMTOM has reportedly made a debut in the Indian smartphone market with three smartphones. These smartphones fall in the mid-range segment starting at Rs 7490. The devices that have been launched are H1, H3 and H5 which are priced at Rs 7,499, Rs 9,990 and Rs 10,990, respectively. With this entry, HOMTOM is aiming a market share of at least 3% over a year in the segment of mid-range smartphones in India. The market for smartphones is already notoriously saturated. This is why review sites like YotYiam.com providing helpful lists are so necessary. â€œIn the first six months we are looking to have three to five percent market share in the smartphone market,â€ Nikhil Bhutani, Director for Product and Operations at HOMTOM said. Â Â With its entry ...

24Aug By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

China’s Ofo Faces User Complaints Against Revenue Raising Strategy

China’s leading bike-sharing platform Ofo is again into the headlines due to customer’s complaints regarding its new revenue raising strategy. It has been reported that when the users open the Ofo app to unlock a share bike, they have to first watch a five-second video advertisement. Many app users have got annoyed by this and have socially stated that the videos will be a drain on their mobile data allowance. A similar case happened just a few days ago with Netflix where the people were posting annoying tweets against Netflix promo videos that could neither be skipped not muted. The mobile applications these days are finding new ways of promoting themselves in every possible way. These insiders were cited by Beijing Youth Daily as saying that Ofo might lose customers because of thei...

22Aug By Gauri SinghNo Comments

CHINA

Cost of Living in China’s First Tier Cities Gets a Hype

China is the most populated country in the world and therefore, its GDP is also the highest among all the countries. Taking all these points into consideration, the cost of living in first-tier cities in China has also been increasing day by day and has now paved way among the highest in the world. The country is growing rapidly and so is the cost of living. The cities where the cost of living is high include Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen. Generally, Beijing high living cost mainly for its house rent and the expensive traffic fee. In China, The areas of lowest living cost include Yingchuan, Luoyang, Xining, these cities all located in northwest China. Living in these cities could reduce the cost of living. The areas of normal living cost include many middle cities, like Chengdu, ...