Taobao signs up 1.2 million registered users in Hong Kong in overseas push
Online portal will initially improve service and make purchases easier for customers
"Hong Kong and Taiwan are the first steps of our effort to go overseas," said Daphne Lee, director of Taobao's international business. "We have no ambitious targets for these markets currently. We will focus on improving service this year, popularising the platform among more users and helping them purchase online more comfortably and conveniently."
The online shopping portal had 500,000 registered users in Taiwan at the end of August, Lee said. She believes raising that figure to 3 million is not "too far away".
Consumers in these areas are mostly interested in women's fashion, women's shoes and digital gadgets.
Lee said that in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Taobao users already could pay with credit cards issued in the two places. The next step will be to explore more co-operation with local partners, including banks, to offer other payment methods.
Sales of Taobao and Tmall, Alibaba's business-to-customer subsidiary, would surpass 1 trillion yuan (HK$1.22 trillion) this year, the company said previously. Jack Ma Yun, chairman and chief executive of the group, said over the weekend that the figure would surge 10-fold over the next three years. This was sharply more optimistic than the figure previously given by the firm of 3 trillion yuan in five years' time.