Alibaba appoints ReadyPlanet as its Thailand reseller

Thomas Ho, Thailand country manager of Alibaba.com, said this was the third country in Southeast Asia where the Chinese company had appointed an authorised reseller. Malaysia and Vietnam have had resellers for about five years. 

“Thailand is a really important potential market for us. There are a lot of requirements for products from Thailand from our buyers,” he said.

Alibaba.com provides an e-commerce platform for businesses. To be an Alibaba.com member, users, both buyers and sellers, need to register. Currently, it has about 36 million registered users, around 90 per cent of which are buyers and the rest sellers. 

The largest buyers are in markets outside China such as the United States, Britain, the Middle East and Asean, while the majority of sellers are from China and Asean. 

As of last month, the number of registered users in Thailand had increased by 42 per cent from the previous year. This was natural growth without the benefit of a local reseller. Therefore, it is possible to expect more growth in Thailand this year.

Ho said Alibaba.com aimed to build its brand awareness in Thailand and help small and medium-sized enterprises get the most benefit from using e-commerce as a crucial channel to reach out to the global marketplace. 

“Our buyers prefer two things, attractive prices and product quality, and [Southeast Asia] is one of the best sources of products our buyers love to buy. To establish an official local partner in Thailand is to fulfil the demands of buyers around the world,” he said.

Currently, Alibaba.com has around 570,000 registered users in Thailand, mostly buyers. One mission of this partnership is to increase the number of sellers in Thailand, but Ho declined to disclose a target.

Sellers listed on Alibaba.com can choose between free and paid services. The latter are available in three packages, with annual fees of US$1,399, $2,999 and $5,999. 

Burin Kledmanee, chief operating officer of ReadyPlanet, said the company’s target by end of this year was to get 10 per cent of its existing customers as 16,000 companies to use Alibaba.com’s business-to-business e-commerce platform. 

ReadyPlanet targets business growth this year of 50 per cent. Its revenue comes from four main businesses: advertising, website, enterprise, and training at portion of 50:30:15:5 respectively.

“We will educate Thai businesses to use Alibaba.com as the springboard to reach the global market easily and efficiently,” Burin said.

“Currently, Thailand’s export value is around Bt7.3 trillion, 65 per cent of gross domestic product. Thailand can increase export value by using the e-commerce platform. 

“There are around 2.7 million SMEs in Thailand, but only 15,000 are registered as exporters. Around 10 per cent of those 2.7 million SMEs have the potential to become exporters. E-commerce is the right platform to help them to reach the world.” 

Apart from Alibaba.com’s B2B e-commerce platform, Ho said the company was considering bringing its other businesses such as AliExpress and AliPay into the Thai market in the future. 

Currently, Alibaba.com has representative offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, Singapore, the United States and Britain. 

“For now, we do not plan to set up a local office here in Thailand. We will work closely with our local partner to penetrate the market here, like we do in Malaysia, Vietnam and Turkey.

“We are the largest B2B online marketplace in the world based on the number of memberships and daily traffic. We have 36 million registered users in more than 24 countries. We cannot disclose the exact numbers of daily traffic,” Ho said.

At Alibaba.com, there are more than 40 product categories. For Thailand, the potential product categories are food and beverages, agricultural, apparel, and beauty. 

To use Alibaba.com service, users can access alibaba.readyplanet.com. Information about all of its services is at thai.alibaba.com.