Alibaba hits record high sales for Double 11

Taobao, one of China's biggest online marketplace, promotes Singles Day sales, Nov 11, 2013. [Photo/icpress.cn]

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said online transaction volume topped 30 billion yuan ($4.9 billion) after 21 hours of trading on Monday, breaking its record for Double 11 shopping spree.

The figure, shown at 9:20 pm on a series of screens at the company's Hangzhou-based headquarters, eclipsed last year's overall daily sales generated by the group's business-to-customer site Tmall and customer-to-customer marketplace Taobao.

The number quickly soared to 20 billion yuan over the next 30 minutes.

Alibaba recorded more than 1 billion yuan in transactions over Alipay in six minutes during Monday, a milestone that took an extra 31 minutes to hit last year.

The company's chairman Jack Ma has suggested that the value of transactions on Tmall and its customer-to-customer Taobao marketplace could top 30 billion yuan, up 60 percent of sales on the same day last year.

This year over 20,000 merchants teamed up with Tmall to slash prices up to 50 percent and enticed tens of millions of bargain hunters.