At its Finance Summit in Beijing, the company said it will provide the ITC infrastructure for banking customers through an open supplier ecosystem, while other suppliers will add products and services to help the company perform more like the internet companies their customers know and love.
The ecosystem includes application suppliers, systems integrators and consultancy firms.
Alibaba started to build the core of its ecosystem in 1999 as a business-to-business trading website (Alibaba.com). In 2003, Alibaba expanded into customer-to-customer e‑commerce (Taobao) in 2003 and business-to-customer online retailing (Tmall) in 2008. To further support the exponential growth of the group, Alibaba has built its own cloud data service platform (Ali Cloud Computing), entertainment businesses (Alibaba Pictures and Ali Music) and financial ecosystem (Ant Financial). It has also formed strategic partnerships with a network of logistics companies (Cainiao China Smart Logistics) and invested in numerous companies across multiple industries in China and overseas (Kuaidi Dache, SingPost, Snapchat, Kabam, Paytm, etc.).
Einen weiteren Einblick in die chinesische Gründerszene gewährt Erik Roth in Why China Can’t Create a Silicon Valley of Its Own