Alibaba forms alliance with India's Infomedia

<p><font face="Arial">HANGZHOU  -- China's B2B e-commerce portal alibaba.com has entered into a long-term strategic partnership with Infomedia, India's largest yellow pages and special interest publishing company, Alibaba announced on Tuesday.</font></p><p style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="Arial">"India is a priority market for Alibaba's global plans and Infomedia will help provide on-ground support including sales, marketing and customer service," said the Alibaba CEO Wei Zhe.</font></p><p style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="Arial">"We believe the alliance will help Alibaba become a major online trade platform in India by the end of 2008," Wei said.</font></p><p style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="Arial">Alibaba and Infomedia partnership will combine the power of traditional print publishing with online media and e-commerce to provide India small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) with a one-stop solution for global and domestic trade.</font></p><p style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="Arial">Around 20,000 Indian companies have signed up each month for Alibaba's India channel since the launching of the channel last December and Alibaba has more than 400,000 members in India.</font></p><p style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="Arial">Alibaba's net profit surged to 967.8 million yuan (138 million US dollars), more than quadrupled from a year earlier. Currently, the Hangzhou-based company  has nearly 300,000 paid members, accounting for about a 70 percent market share of online B2B trade in China.</font></p><p><font face="Arial">Currently, India has more than 8 million SMEs with employees of about 30 million. A predicted 3 million SMEs participate in the B2B trade.</font></p></div>