Alibaba, Mail.ru and RDIF plan to develop a joint project in online trading
Recently it became known that the Russian direct investment fund (RDIF), the Chinese company Alibaba Group and Mail.ru Group are planning to create a joint venture in Russia in the field of electronic commerce. At present, negotiations are “in advanced stages,” as reported by Vedomosti. As far as can be understood, RDIF and Alibaba are potential investors of Mail.ru Group.
Representatives of all three organizations have not yet commented on the news. By the way, the fact that RDIF can become a partner of Alibaba in Russia became known at the end of 2017. Then the general director of the fund, Kirill Dmitriev, announced this. He promised that RDIF will soon announce investments "with Alibaba in the logistics infrastructure of the Internet in Russia."
“We have invited leading partners from China, Japan, Singapore, Europe, and the United Arab Emirates, who together with us will invest in technology projects as part of your initiative on the digital economy,” said Dmitriev. The likelihood that the promise will be realized is quite high - Alibaba has recently held several meetings within the framework of possible marketing partnerships with Russian companies.
In addition to the already mentioned Russian organizations, Alibaba is negotiating with VTB. So far, negotiations are in the initial stage, so there is no reason to talk about any significant results.
The largest Alibaba asset in Russia at the moment is the online platform AliExpress. Russians make up a significant proportion of buyers on this site. According to information provided by the Association of E-commerce Companies, purchases at Chinese online stores account for about 52% of all Russian purchases abroad. About 60% of them are purchases on AliExpress, which is about 116 billion rubles last year.
In addition to Aliexpress, the Alibaba platform is also developing the Tmall brand, this is an online platform where brand products are sold. This project works with Russian sellers.