Alibaba To Surpass Wal-Mart As The Top Retailer

Alibaba expects to overtake the record sales posted by Wal-Mart in a fiscal year

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is one of the biggest retailers in the world which has given tough time to not only domestic competitors but the international competitors as well. The company has always given its rivals a tough time when it comes surpassing its lead. For a very long time, Wal-Mart had been on the very top in the domestic and international market but its growth was hampered considering the pace at which American’s reigning monarch of online shopping Amazon.com, Inc. was growing. But regardless, Wal-Mart has managed to set up good business in its physical stores as well as online.

The company posted staggering sales valued at a massive $478.6 billion for the fiscal year which ended on January 31. According to sources, it is believed that the Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding is expected to surpass the US multinational Wal-Mart Stores as the world’s largest retail marketplace in the coming times. In an official media report which was published on Wednesday, Alibaba Group currently has total trading of $463.3 billion which is set to exceed before the fiscal year ends.

Times of India reported that Alibaba Group Holding will soon make an official announcement at the end of the fiscal year on March 31. Alibaba said a couple of days ago, “WalMart Stores Inc posted net sales of $478.6 billion for its fiscal year ending Jan 31, while the latest trading volume figure for Alibaba amounted to three trillion yuan ($463.3 billion)”.

The current ongoing sales which Alibaba just posted are equal to the last year’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of one of the China’s provinces, Sichuan. The GDP of Sichuan is ranked sixth on the Chinese mainland.

The CEO of the firm, Daniel Zhang Yong, said in a conference which took place in Hangzhou that the sales figure was recorded on its multiple online marketplaces such as Tmall which is the business to consumer platform, Taobao Marketplace and Rural Taobao which are the consumer to consumer platform, and Juhuasuan which is the group buying site.

At the beginning of this week, Zhang Yong said that it expects Alibaba Group to achieve a milestone by having an annual trading volume of $980 million approx. (six trillion Yuan) in the coming four years. He added, “In 2024, we wanted to be a business platform serving 2 billion consumers and tens of millions of enterprises at home and abroad.”

Zhang continued, “the company will strive to combine cloud computing and big data technologies with the Internet and the Internet of Things, as well as consumer terminal equipment, to spur its development. The Internet of Things is the network of physical objects - devices, vehicles, buildings and other items - embedded with electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity that enables these objects to collect and exchange data.”