Alibaba Group Holding Limited has opened its first Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) headquarters in Australia's Melbourne, marking another worldwide expansion of the Chinese e-commerce giant.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma is hoping that the e-commerce giant would help Australian and New Zealand businesses share the company’s popular products with billions of patrons around the world.

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The Melbourne office of Alibaba aims to support 1,300 Australian and 400 New Zealand businesses that sell products via Tmall and Tmall Global, Alibaba's online retail platforms. It also hopes to attract new merchants. The expansion also means enhancing the cloud computing, payments, digital entertainment and logistics in the region. 

“We believe that globalisation is the future, a lot of people don't like globalisation today but we are strong believers. We are strong believers in trade, we think in the past 20 years globalisation was controlled by 16,000 big companies what if we can help 6 million business do business across borders?” Jack Ma said in the press conference.

The Chinese e-commerce giant’s new Melbourne office will be headed by ANZ managing director Maggie Zhou. She said that the new office would serve as the headquarters of the company’s operators in Australia and New Zealand. In addition, it will be a major step in supporting local business clients to enter the lucrative Chinese market. 

Alibaba Cloud has opened data centre in Australia in 2016 and claimed that over 1000 physical stores in Australia and New Zealand accept Alipay for paying merchandise.

Moreover, the Chinese e-commerce giant has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Australia Post that aims to streamline logistics between Australia and China. It would also help in developing the first Australian marketplace within Alibaba's Lazada e-Commerce Network in Southeast Asia.

TagsAlibaba, melbourne, Australia, new zealand, e-commerce, lazada, Jack Ma