Alibaba May Tie-Up With Tatas To Step-into India's Online Retail Market

By siliconindia | Monday, 21 March 2016, 12:59 Hrs

BENGALURU: Alibaba, a Chinese eCommerce giant has approached Tata Sons for an expected partnership as it envisions setting up a shop in India later this year. This act will boost India’s online retail market that is already growing at frenetic pace, reports Sagar Malviya and Chaitali Chakravarty for The Economic Times.

Alibaba Group President Michael Evans and Global Managing Director K Guru Gowrappan met Tata Group's Chairman Cyrus Mistry recently to converse about the possibility of joint venture.

A person with knowledge of the meeting said, “It might roughly take two quarters for Alibaba to confirm the partnership. Although the talk between the two parties is true, when the time comes for closing the deal, Alibaba may or may not go with the Tata Group. He continued, “Both companies would have considered various aspects such as logistics, Omni-channel support and offline stores before coming to a decision.”

A Tata Sons spokesperson said, “We have been a preferred partner by several entities in the past owing to our robust working model. Nevertheless, we won’t comment any further.” Evans on Friday had revealed about the plans to step-into India's ecommerce segment this year. “Against the backdrop of Digital India, the present scenario offers an exciting chance for us to carefully explore the opportunity and launch ourselves into eCommerce market,” Evans told reporters after meeting Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communications and IT Minister.

At this point, it is noteworthy to mention that Alibaba sold goods worth $377 billion in 2015, compared with around $16 billion by all of India's ecommerce companies put together, according to Morgan Stanley. On the other hand, Tata Group, a salt-to-steel multinational with combined sales of $108.78 billion, has been a launch pad for other consumer brands in the country.