Alibaba reveals expansion plans for Rural Taobao
Alibaba’s rural e-commerce initiative “Rural Taobao” plans to expand its coverage to 1,000 counties and 150,000 villages across China in the next three years.
In an article published on the semi-official website Alizila yesterday (21 June), Bill Wang, vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager of Rural Taobao, was quoted as saying: “Our mission is clear: We want to improve the living conditions of China’s rural regions. To do so, we need to provide high-quality goods, personalized services, smart logistic solutions and prices comparable to that of the cities.”
Launched in October 2014, Rural Taobao aims to “buttress trade between China’s remote regions and urban areas”. Currently, around half of China’s 1.3bn population live in rural areas. The company has built up a network of e-commerce service centres at the county and town level to provide services that enable villagers to purchase products online, as well as sell their goods via Rural Taobao’s dedicated online marketplace and other Alibaba e-commerce platforms.
Currently, the initiative covers 700 counties with over 30,000 service centres.
According to Alizila, Wang said that one of the company’s short-term goals is to offer next-day delivery of any goods and at-home installation of large electronic products.
Alibaba has also recently opened a number of “Taobao Select Service Stations”, where villagers can purchase an array of products, from food, to clothes and electronic items, at a physical location, without having to place the orders online.
