Alibaba Group Holding Limited has had its application for trademark protection accepted in Macau, enabling the Chinese e-commerce giant to enter the MSAR with a series of products.
Brands Ant Star, Ant Star Bank, Alimebot, 阿里蜜，星匯，星安，智惠，星匯銀行，智惠銀行, are now able to create and commercialise in Macau products ranging from newspapers and magazines to credit and debit cards, scientific and nautical instruments, file sharing software and GPS equipment. But also advertising, execution and supervision of loyalty programmes and incentives, business consulting to traffic optimisation of websites, large warehouse retail services or even insurance, financial and monetary businesses.
In total, many hundreds of products and services that the company – based in Hangzhou and founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and Peng Lei – is now allowed to conduct here.
With over 50,000 employees, Alibaba provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals.
Recently, the Chinese giant invested US$1 billion (MOP8 billion) in Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada Group increasing its stake to more than 80 per cent and making is presence even stronger in the region.
According to Forbes magazine, over the past year Ma has spent more than 800 hours flying to dozens of countries, meeting business leaders and heads of state to introduce his grand vision: small businesses from all corners of the world trading freely and securely on the Alibaba platform.
Highly reported Jack Ma’s ambition is to see his company reach the US$1 trillion mark in gross merchandise value by 2020.