Alibaba to boost development of SMEs

Alibaba Group, the largest e-commerce company in China, plans to support the growth of 1 million online vendors with annual transaction volumes exceeding 1 million yuan ($157,800) in the following years, said Ma Yun, chairman and CEO of the company.

This is part of Alibaba's efforts to fuel the growth of small and medium enterprises, or SMEs, which trade on its online platforms, such as taobao.com and tmall.com.

"Small is beautiful. For companies, small and good is the key," said Ma on Sept 9 during the Netrepreneur Summit, Alibaba's annual gathering and conference for its online vendors.

To support SMEs, Alibaba will provide e-commerce services for vendors, provide them with financing through its micro-lending arm, and tap into the huge e-commerce data it has to provide business guidelines, said Ma.

About 6.6 million SMEs trade on taobao.com, the marketplace where consumers trade with each other, said Ma.

Alibaba will step up efforts to change manufacturing after it changed how sales work, he said.

"We will go from business-to-consumer to consumer-to-business," he said, referring to a manufacturing system in which the needs of individual consumers will be satisfied with tailor-made products and services.