Yahoo – AFP,
11 September 2018
|
Alibaba was founded by tech billionaire Jack Ma in 1999 |
Chinese
e-commerce giant Alibaba and Russian technology group Mail.ru on Tuesday
announced a deal to launch a joint venture in Russia and former Soviet
countries.
The two
groups, along with the Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF and telecom operator
MegaFon, announced the creation 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)."
The new
company will be called AliExpress Russia -- taking after the name of an
existing Alibaba platform.
It will be
48 percent owned by Alibaba, 24 percent by MegaFon, 15 percent by Mail.ru and
13 percent by the RDIF, the statement said, without disclosing the amounts
involved.
|
Mail.ru is one of Russia' biggest tech firms |
Alibaba,
founded by tech billionaire Jack Ma in 1999, already plays a major role in
e-commerce in Russia through its AliExpress and Tmall platforms.
"We
want this to be a Russian business," Alibaba Group president Michael Evans
said at a press conference in Vladivostok, saying that the Chinese group was
bringing "experience and technology."
Kirill
Dmitriyev, general director of the RDIF, said that the Russian partners would
receive a combined 52 percent percent share in the new structure.
Mail.ru,
whose assets include Russia's most popular social media network VK, is owned by
Kremlin-friendly billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
In 2017 it
launched a platform called Pandao selling Chinese goods to Russian consumers.
Usmanov was
quoted as saying in a statement that the new partnership is a "significant
step for the digital transformation of the Russian economy."
The deal
comes after Russia's largest bank Sberbank and internet company Yandex
announced an e-commerce tie-up in August.
No comments:
Post a Comment