AllDragon International sees positive future for online-to-offline e-commerce business
Growing demand from mainland mall owners looking to integrate online and offline services inspired Gong Yitao to set up a cost-effective shared platform to track shoppers' behaviour
After spending several years serving the mainland's two giant players in the internet and property sectors - Alibaba and Dalian Wanda - Tom Gong Yitao decided to start his own business last year.
He set up AllDragon International, which employs about 40 people, to offer an online-to-offline (O2O) e-commerce platform to mainland retail centre owners. In view of the fast growing O2O e-commerce market, he hopes to provide services to about a tenth of the shopping centres on the mainland in three years.
There are more than 3,000 shopping malls on the mainland and developers and mall owners all want to integrate the internet into their current offline physical presence. However, not all of them like Wanda can spend a lot of money to establish their own O2O platform. The strong demand prompted me to establish the company.
We will build a platform that sets the membership system for them, install free Wi-fi services in their malls and gather data about shoppers' behaviour. With this platform, shopping centre owners can interact directly with shoppers and better understand their behaviour. As this is a shared platform with other shopping centre owners, it is cost effective.