After conquering grocery deliveries, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is setting its sights on a new part of China’s $4 trillion retail sector: department stores.
The e-commerce giant, which is also venturing into cloud computing and entertainment, is increasingly looking at traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, Chairman Jack Ma, said on the company’s 18th anniversary.
Alibaba, started in Ma’s apartment in 1999, is worth $458 billion today.
The executives, speaking less than a month after Amazon.com Inc. closed its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc., discussed Alibaba’s strategy for dealing with competition, its vision on data and challenges the company will face.
Ma said Alibaba will need to embrace a different mindset given its current size, and move away from its asset-light approach to grab a bigger share of global trade.
