China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group announced on Monday that it has achieved a major milestone as its Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) for the current fiscal year crossed ¥3 trillion ($462 billion) mark.   

Joseph Tsai, Alibaba's Executive Vice Chairman, made the announcement on its blog alizila.com. 

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"Back in 2012, we achieved 1 trillion Yuan in GMV. Then, it seemed tripling our GMV would be a tall order and, a bit more than three years later, here we are," Tsai said.

Speaking at a press conference in Hangzhou, Alibaba's Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang attributed the company's new milestone to company's immensely integrated ecosystem.   

"What is behind this 3 trillion RMB milestone is an entire business ecosystem and fully-integrated Internet ecosystem that harmoniously works together to achieve tremendous capabilities," Daniel Zhang said in a press conference.

On the downside, Alibaba's GMV during the current quarter grew by 23 percent, its slowest quarterly growth rate in more than three years.

However, company continues to remain bullish over increasing its GMV figures. Zhang added that the company's next aim is to reach ¥6 trillion in annual GMV by 2020.

The company said it will specifically focus on rural china and "customers that are still hesitant for online shopping" to double its GMV.

According to Tsai, Alibaba's rural focus approach has already started giving good results, with the company so far making strong customer base in as many as 60,000 Chinese villages.     

Alibaba's founder and Executive Chairman, Jack Ma, has stressed the need to focus on rural economy to fuel company's growth in coming years.

Analysts said that since revenue from urban Chinese cities is not increasing substantially, Alibaba has no option but to focus over rural economy for growth.              

Meanwhile, after crossing 3 trillion GMV, market analysts predicted that Alibaba would soon overtake American multinational firm Walmart to become the world's top retailer. However, no top executive from Alibaba Group has commented on this prediction.  

TagsAlibaba, Alibaba Group, china