Alibaba Makes Its B2B Entrance In Thailand

Since Alibaba founder Jack Ma met with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to push the B2B eCommerce business model, the Chinese conglomerate is making new moves in Asia to promote its business-to-business platform.

This time, Alibaba has teamed up with online service provider ReadyPlanet in Thailand, its first entrance into the Thai market. Reports said Thursday (April 30) that ReadyPlanet will become Alibaba’s first Thai reseller, a move Alibaba.com’s Thailand manager Thomas Ho said will likely boost the small- and medium-sized business community in the nation as they gain a new digital portal to reach out to business overseas.

Thailand is Alibaba’s third Southeast Asian market in which it has entered the B2B eCommerce business, following partnerships struck in Vietnam and Malaysia. Ho said that Thailand is particularly important for Alibaba because there is a high demand for Thai products from the platform’s buyers.

“Our buyers prefer two things, attractive prices and product quality,” Ho said, adding that Southeast Asia is one market that meets this demand. “To establish an official local partner in Thailand is to fulfill the demands of buyers around the world.”

Reports said ReadyPlanet is aiming to grow its business by 50 percent this year and to get 10 percent of its existing customer base to use the Alibaba B2B portal. “We will educate Thai businesses to use Alibaba.com as the springboard to reach the global market easily and efficiently,” ReadyPlanet’s chief operating officer Burin Kledmanee said.

According to Kledmanee, about 10 percent of the 2.7 million SMEs in Thailand have the potential to become exporters, but only about 15,000 are currently registered. An eCommerce platform like Alibaba, he said, is a crucial way to increase small business exports to major markets like the U.S. and U.K.

The first product categories for suppliers in Thailand using Alibaba are food and beverages, agriculture, apparel and beauty, reports said.