On January 5, many of our AGLA team members returned back to Hangzhou after enjoying their holidays in their respective home countries. In fact, the AGLA Class rung into the New Year with a Big Data and New Retail experience … Continue reading A visit to HEMA Supermarket- New Retail in China

Since its launch, “Double 11” has turned the online shopping festival into a national craze and hit new records for the ninth year: US$ 25.3 billion GMV; 1.3 billion packages generated in 24 hours, of which 812 million delivery orders was processed by Cainiao Network. After unpacking our orders placed on Double 11 (it felt like Christmas!), the AGLAers began to wonder how the logistics giant Cainiao worked its magic to sort out millions of parcels within a small period:  how automated is the Cainiao warehouse? how does the staff pick & pack orders? With these questions in mind, we … Continue reading Cainiao Warehouse Demystified

At the end of October, AGLA Class 2 welcomed one of the most memorable and valuable experiences of the AGLA journey so far… The 20 of us were split into 6 groups to travel across China to experience Rural Taobao … Continue reading AGLA explores Rural Taobao

And we are back! Team Gateway has been hard at work again to bring the Gateway conference back to North America. Along with four other AGLA colleagues, Ariana, Qian, Alex, Mathieu, Jeff and I came to Toronto, Canada’s most populous city to tell the Alibaba story to Canadian SME’s about the growing opportunities to sell to China’s middle class. China’s growing population and emerging middle class, which is ten times that of the Canadian population, presents a large opportunity for agribusinesses in Canada. This time at Gateway, I helped convene the break out sections for fresh food including an educational … Continue reading 2017 Gateway Canada

Last week, Class 2 of Alibaba’s Global Leadership Academy (AGLA) visited the world’s largest wholesale market located in Yiwu (义乌), Zhejiang province, a mere two hours bus ride from Alibaba HQ in Hangzhou. It not only turned out to be a trip to one of the most impressive wholesale cities in the world, where its over 75,000 merchants last year sold around 70% of the world’s Christmas decorations, but also a trip back in history to a time when Alibaba’s journey just began 18 years ago: as a platform for Chinese producers and wholesalers to export into the world through … Continue reading AGLA visits Yiwu – Home to China’s largest wholesale market

The AGLA trip to the Gobi Desert has inspired me to write my first contribution to our blog. Alibaba has the well-known goal to serve 2 billion customers and 10 million businesses. In previous blog posts my colleagues have rightly … Continue reading Leadership Practice @ Gobi Desert

While planning for the annual AGLA outdoor activities, Nanjing was voted as one of the preferred destinations by many AGLAers. I for one voted for the Zhangjiejie Mountains, also famously known as the AVATAR Mountains (the location where parts of … Continue reading A Day in Nanjing- Walking Through Modern Chinese History

Alibaba’s 10-Year Strategy  Alibaba has three key priorities for the next decade: Globalization – helping SMEs expand beyond their borders via e-commerce, internet financing, data, marketing and logistics Rural Development – closing the digital divide and alleviating poverty through economic opportunity … Continue reading AGLA’s Rural Taobao Journey + Video

Using e-commerce to tackle the challenge of rural poverty should be considered a technological innovation. That was the proposal that I put forward during an AGLA debate last week. My tong xue[1] pushed back, arguing that using e-commerce to tackle … Continue reading Ecommerce + Rural China – A Nurturing Combination