Asia2B.com has unveiled six partnerships with local and mainland firms seeking to bring their procurement operations online.
It will create procurement exchanges for electronic toy marketplace operator 1stop-toys.com, cable-television operator i-Cable Communications, office-equipment seller Jardine One Solution and online Chinese-medicine trader M2B e-Commerce.
It has also formed a partnership with fixed-line telecommunication services provider New T&T, and will create a Chinese-medicine electronic marketplace for New World BioSciences - a subsidiary of New World Development.
The announcement implied that Commerce One, the United States-based online trading software developer backing Asia2B.com financially and technologically, had made a significant inroad in the Asian market.
Asia2B.com, a trading portal-builder backed by eight local and US-based companies, is the first global trading portal builder in which Commerce One has made an investment. It will be one of 40 global trading portals worldwide that have adopted Commerce One's software platform.
Asia2B.com, set up in May, is owned by six local groups, American venture capital firm WI Harper Group and Commerce One. The six groups are i-Cable Communications, Sunevision Holdings, Jardine Matheson Group, New World China Enterprises, Swire Group and Beijing Enterprises Holdings.