Alibaba launches new office in Kuala Lumpur

Alibaba Group on Monday (18 June) deepened its commitment to Malaysia, as it opens an office in Kuala Lumpur to help Malaysian businesses identify global cross-border trade opportunities.

Alibaba described the office as a “one-stop shop” for Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises, providing support and platforms to assist them to drive exports, extensive training programmes and cloud-computing services to foster broader technological innovation in the country.

At the office-opening ceremony, executive chairman of Alibaba, Jack Ma, said: “Alibaba’s focus is on three areas when we partner with Malaysia, as well as other countries – to digitise our local partners and empower small businesses and young people to go global.”

“Over the past 30 years, only large corporations have benefited from globalisation. Imagine if we could support 60 million small business around the world. This is Alibaba’s vision of an inclusive and sustainable economy,” he said.

The office opening is the latest step Alibaba has taken to create inclusive and innovative global trading technology infrastructure in Malaysia. The country was the launching pad for the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) initiative introduced by Ma.

“I would like to congratulate Alibaba for the opening of its national office in Malaysia. We consider this a shining symbol of China-Malaysia friendship that is based on mutual respect and benefits that augur well for the cooperation on the part of governments, businesses and people from both countries,” said Malaysia’s minister of finance Yang Berhormat Lim Guan Eng.

“We look forward to the opportunities this partnership will bring to Malaysian SME,” Lim added.

As part of the eWTP program, Alibaba last November launched its first international eHub in Malaysia, aiming to facilitate exports for Malaysian SMEs and create the infrastructure to support global trade. Services include e-commerce, logistics, cloud computing, mobile payments and training of talent.

Other initiatives have followed, including establishment of Alibaba’s first regional e-fulfillment hub near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and an internet data center – Malaysia’s first global public cloud platform.

Alibaba also announced it will hold a “Malaysia Week,” an online promotion to attract Chinese consumers to buy Malaysian. The event, from 6 July to 12 July will showcase over 50 Malaysian brands from multiple product categories. They’ll be highlighted to Chinese consumers across Alibaba’s platforms as an array of “must-see, must-eat and must-buy” products and services.

Alibaba’s eWTP and other activities in Malaysia include training trained thousands of individuals, entrepreneurs and cloud computing professionals are trained under various programmes in conjunction with leading Malaysian universities and government agencies to support Malaysia’s sustainable e-commerce development. Other products and services include logistics, cloud computing and e-commerce.

Photo / Alizila