World’s Largest E-commerce Firm Alibaba Files For US IPO

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alibaba1Chinese online retailing giant Alibaba Group has filed for a US IPO, set to be one the biggest IPO’s in history after Facebook’s, putting the giant in the same ranks as IBM and Oracle with a projected worth of nearly $170 to $250 billion according to data from Bloomberg.

Founded in 1999 in China by the legendary Jack Ma, a former English teacher, Alibaba is one of the world’s biggest tech success stories which has grown from its launch in a sitting room to become the largest online marketplace for companies in China for over a decade with its other arms Juhuasuan, Taobao Marketplace and Tmall and several acquisitions.

Data from Forbes say  as at the end of end of December 2013, Alibaba had 231 million active buyers on site, a 44% increase from 2012. The firm had 75% of all its transaction done on mobile phones, and 19.7%  from phones or tablets. The firm’s gross merchandise volumes exceeded $248 billion in 2013.

The biggest earners in Alibaba’s IPO include Japan’s SoftBank with a 34.4% stake, US Internet giant Yahoo with a 22.6% stake and  its founder and Chairman Jack Ma, with a 8.9% stake.

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Sam Wakoba
Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Sam is a pan-African technology journalist, author, entrepreneur, technology business mentor, judge, educationalist, and a sought-after speaker and panelist across Africa’s innovation ecosystem. He is the convenor of the popular monthly #TechNight evening event and the #StartupEast Awards and Conference, platforms that bring together startup founders, developers, entrepreneurs, investors, content creators, and tech professionals from across the continent. For more than 16 years, Sam has reported on and analysed Africa’s technology landscape, covering some of the continent’s most impactful, and at times controversial policies, programs, investors, co-founders, startups, and corporations. His work is known for its independence, depth, and fairness, with a singular goal of helping build and strengthen Africa’s nascent technology ecosystem. Beyond journalism, Sam is a business analyst and consultant, working with brands, universities, corporates, SMEs, and startups across East Africa, as well as international companies entering the East African market or scaling across Africa. In his free time, he volunteers as a consulting editor and fintech analyst at Business Tech Kenya, a business, technology, and data firm that publishes reports, reviews, and insights on business and technology trends in Kenya. Follow him on X: @SamWakoba