Jack Ma, chairman of the board of Alibaba Group, announced at the fifth anniversary of the founding Taobao.com that the group will invest another CNY2 billion in Taobao.com.
This is the third round of investment that Taobao.com has received from Alibaba since its foundation in 2003. Taobao.com was established by Alibaba Group with CNY450 million on May 10, 2003. In October 2005, the group invested another CNY1 billion in its subsidiary. So far, the accumulated investment by Alibaba Group to Taobao.com has reached CNY3.45 billion.
Ma says that the task of Taobao and Alibaba in the next five to ten years is to create a large and mature e-commerce ecosystem. The CNY2 billion investments will be used in technology development and innovation in the next five years and the group hopes to exceed eBay and Amazon in business volume by then.
According to the statistics from Taobao.com, the company has 67 million registered users and the number of daily visitors is about 10 million. However, as one of the biggest C2C platforms in China, Taobao's profit-making ability has been questioned. With regards to the problem of profitability, Ma says that he is not at all worried about it. Compared with making money, the sense of achievement and satisfaction that comes from Taobao's rapid development is more meaningful for him, he added.