Alibaba appoints Thai reseller
ALIBABA has appointed Crown Tech Advance as its second authorised reseller in Thailand in a move to substantially increase its membership numbers in the Kingdom.
The China-based online marketplace giant is targeting having over 5,000 members in the Kingdom by the end of the year.
Zhang Jun, general manager of Alibaba’s overseas business-to-business unit, said under the AJD cooperation the Chinese company would provide services to support local small and medium-sized enterprises.
“Thailand is an important country for us to do business for now and the future,” Zhang said.
“We now have more than 50 million members worldwide and around 600 members are existing members from Thailand.”
Jerry Wu, country manager for Alibaba Thailand, said that under the AJD corporation Alibaba would provide a B2B marketplace or e-commerce platform for local businesses.
He said Thailand was a top five global market for buyer searches. The top two markets are China and India.
The firm is eyeing 10,000 Thai members by the end of next year.
It has plans to help Thai SMEs export to new markets.
“We want to help Thai SMEs export their products to international markets and Thailand is a big market for us,” Wu said.
“The firm also has also expanded its business in India, Indonesia and Malaysia.”
Nattawat Woranakul, deputy CEO of AJD, said the company had set up a new business unit with around 20 staff to secure members for Alibaba.
It would do that via its call centre and its eight service centres nationwide, Nattawat said.
Nattawat expects that by the end of this year it would have gained around 5,000 new SME members who want to provide their products via Alibaba.com.
Under the cooperation, AJD will receive money for each new member it secures.
Nattawat said in a bid to lure members AJD would soon corporate with AIS in a campaign to capture the telecom giant’s SME users.
Amorn Meemano, president of AJD, said the firm was negotiating with a bank to provide its new Alibaba service to support the bank’s customers.
“We are under negotiate with the bank as an executive partner so the bank will able to provide an executive service to their customers,” Amorn said.
Last year Alibaba appointed ReadyPlanet, an online service provider, as the first reseller in Thailand.
