Alibaba.com offers training to help SMEs

Judy Cheng, director of global supplier development, said Alibaba had about 250,000 registered members in Thailand. But few are active, and many buyers around the world cannot find Thai products efficiently, so the company wants to activate Thai companies through a training course.

The company has appointed Web Courses Bangkok, an e-commerce training centre. Thailand is the first country in which Alibaba.com has opened a training course.

"Our mission is to assist Thai businesses to bring their quality products to potential buyers throughout the world," Cheng said. "Buyers at Alibaba are interested in Thai rice, design, jewellery, handicrafts, Thai food and automobiles."

Alibaba.com has 25.5 million members in 240 countries and regions offering more than 5,900 product categories in 46 industries.

As of June, it had more than 29 million registered users and 2.5 million supplier storefronts around the world.

"Last time, we came here to sign an MoU [memorandum of understanding] with the Department of International Trade Promotion in February last year to promote e-commerce to more small exporters," Cheng said.

Rachel Wu, marketing manager of global market development at Alibaba.com, said about 3 million Thai SMEs were exporters, but only about 5.8 per cent of them were using e-commerce.

The number of Thai members has increased 22 per cent, or an average of more than 3,800 new registered users per month, over the past year.

According to the Department of Export Promotion, the value of orders through e-commerce during the first five months of this year was Bt7.9 million, marking a rapid increase from only Bt2 million in 2011.

"This shows us that there are a lot of opportunities in Thai e-commerce," Wu said.

Cheng added that at Alibaba.com, China was the biggest supplier while the United States was the biggest buyer.

"Most registered members are suppliers and buyers at the same time, but of our total membership, about 20 per cent are purely suppliers," she said.

The main services that Alibaba offers are an e-commerce platform, a sourcing hub and customised sourcing that helps match a buyer’s detailed request for quotations with the right supplier. It offers three main levels of services: free membership, verified membership, and gold supplier membership.

Most Thai members use the free membership, but it aims to have 30,000 members using verified membership within the one year.

"Only verified membership and gold supplier membership can use the sourcing hub service and customised sourcing service," Wu said.

Alibaba gets its revenue from membership subscriptions from suppliers (they are charged for premium membership) and from value-added service charges to members.

Wu said that in the short term, during the next 12 months, the company aimed to increase the number of verified members in Thailand to 30,000. After that, if it shows good results, the company might set up a representative office here.

Carl Heaton, founder of Web Courses Bangkok, said the courses designed for Alibaba’s members had been in place for two months.

"A lot of Thai websites are very old, and look like they were designed and developed 20 years ago. We set up Web Courses Bangkok to catch up on this business opportunity," Heaton said.

The courses focus on Web design and development, photography, online marketing, and Alibaba.

"The price of an Alibaba training course is Bt2,600 including VAT [value-added tax] per six hours in one day," Heaton said.