Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce giant announced this Wednesday the Open Strategy for its group buying arm Juhuasuan, which just got spun off in this October. In next year, Juhuasuan will be launching an open platform which other industry players could leverage for better traffic and broader audience. Meituan, Gaopeng and Manzuo are among the first batch to go onboard.

The site will also be moved to an independent domain name – juhuasuan.com – from the current ju.taobao.com.

Alibaba revealed some data regarding Juhuasuan’s operation in 2011, here’s some highlights:

Launch: March 22, 2011

Spin-off: October, 2011

Transaction volume: RMB 10 billion plus (US$ 1.58 billion)

Daily Uniques: 12 million

Users: more than 10 million

Funding: RMB 1.2 billion (US$ 190 million)

Offering Local Business: in 41 cities

Winter Sets in for Group Buying? Alibaba Doesn’t Think So

With an unbroken string of news like shutting down service, retrenching from blind expansion, shedding off headcount, counterfeit products and the list can goes on and on, with all those unfortunate news, it seems to many that the spring has long gone and winter is about to set in.

However, Shao Xiaofeng, secretary-general of Alibaba remarked that

“Group buying is not in winter, and not the case in the next three years.”

According to iResearch, the Beijing-based think tank that in 2011 China’s group buying business will have a cumulative transaction volume of over RMB 19.8 billion (US$ 3.1 billion) while Juhuasuan will claim 50% of the market share. Probably that’s where Shao’s confidence comes from.

Shao Xiaofeng, secretary-general of Alibaba. 

Photo Credit: TechWeb

Listener of startups, writer on tech. Maker of things, dreamer by choice.

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2 Comments

  1. I am the owner of asia-buy.com. Help us become the next Alibaba.com for Asia! Please visit and add your company details. For those interested in investing, please contact me on info@asia-buy.com.

  2. Before some Group buying website was down,but now alibaba will star up new Group buying players ,and maybe it has a new creative. After all,alibaba is the the Chinese ecommerce giant.

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