(Chinese Version)

“The water can never be too deep

And the mountain too high

When an open-minded king calls for talent

It is him the world must stand by.”

When I saw news saying that Alibaba’s Tmall had established Office of Assistance for Business Owners’ IPO, it occurred to me these lines from a poem written by Cao Cao, an excellent strategist, politician and poet of late Eastern Han dynasty.

The piece of news struck everyone. For one thing, how could there be 50 business owners nurtured by Alibaba, known for supporting small and mid-sized companies, getting prepared for an IPO? For another, why did Alibaba bother to establish such an office when it appeared that it would benefit nothing.

Alibaba seemed to be very keen in the business, and was even serious about it. Alibaba not only has established an office, but also gathered all the deputy heads of related offices, including financial affairs, data security, etc. and held the Strategic Communication Office for Business Owners on Alibaba’s Platform. At the same time, it aimed to provide business owners with one-stop solutions, help them go through all the procedures and make everything more efficient.

Alibaba is said to serve the majority of small and mid-sized companies, so what good is it to help these business owners prepare for their IPOs? None. Alibaba not only had nothing to gain, but also had to provide all kinds of necessary support. For example, Alibaba will have to cooperate with CSRC’s inspection over the transaction between these business owners with Alibaba and provide related materials to demonstrate their market status.

“We’ve already applied for an IPO, but are still queuing for further reviews. However, we met lots of obstacles in this process, such as confirming the sales volume,” Zhao Pu, CEO of OctMami, told me. “Alibaba did a great thing, and will help us greatly,” Zhang Liaoyuan, founder of Three Squirrels, said. Other business owners of brands such as Huimei Group, Handu.com, Leibo.com, Camel, Yunifang.com, Hanhoo.com, SC-CC, Dog Electronics have all been preparing for an IPO or have already applied for it.

In other words, after being nurtured and brought up by Alibaba’s platform, these “little giants” are already not satisfied anymore and start to dream of doing something bigger.

If Alibaba didn’t show full support to them, then these business owners would find themselves left in a really awkward position, since there are no precedents around the world for brands that grow up via third-party platforms and go public. In this sense, Alibaba’s support will not only provide these business owners with a secure platform for further development, but also help them develop more healthily and sustainably.

A challenging task, isn’t it?

Gu Ying, head of Alibaba’s Office of Assistance for Business Owners, revealed that more business owners would go public in the future, and that Alibaba was willing to join with business owners and solve problems coming out every day.

However, the inconvenient truth is that these business owners will certainly expand their business and find more channels to sell their products, which will certainly undermine Alibaba’s market role and do harm to Alibaba’s future development in a limited sense.

However, Alibaba seemed to be very keen in this cause, yet this isn’t the first time Alibaba amazed everyone and did things so strictly and boldly. Different from some companies, Alibaba seemed to be decisive enough to carry out its decisions. This recent move demonstrated Alibaba’s determination to achieve win-win situation for all the parties and further add values to its ecosystem.

“It is my goal to turn Alibaba into a service provider covering every aspect of people’s life, including water, electricity, coal, etc.,” Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma told me years ago. It seems that he's getting close to his goal.

At present, Alibaba’s three major lines of business, e-commerce platform Taobao, financial service platform Ant Financial, and big-data-technology-based logistics platform Cainiao Network serve the needs of millions of business owners. Compared to self-owned platforms such as Amazon, Alibaba has not only made its own way to success, but also helped millions of other business owners to achieve their dreams too. To some degree, Alibaba has become an incubator for new-economy players in the e-commerce sector.

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @itlaoyou-com, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.