Alibaba’s Taobao+ & the Creaon of an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem CDC Tarun Khanna September 6, 2017 © 2017 Tarun Khanna 招财进宝 zhāo cái jìn bǎo © 2017 Tarun Khanna User Response to + Mone2zaon • Outrage from sellers in reac2on to fees on priority lis2ngs (tens of thousands of negave messages) • Why – Hidden service, violates promise to be free – Technical issue with pay-for-performance contracts • Merchant misuse: bid hi on keywords, but then list products at hi prices. So buyers brought to website without paying fees © 2017 Tarun Khanna Taobao’s Response to User Outrage • Taobao asked their customers! • Benefit of communicaon with users – 60% voted against keyword pricing, especially small vendors – 40% voted for it, sellers pursuing differen2ated lisngs • So zhāo cái jìn bǎo disconnued © 2017 Tarun Khanna New Mone2zaon Model+ Taobao Mall • New B2C ‘Mall’ as solu2on – Established Vendors enter mall with a small fee – Smaller vendors can stay on tradi2onal C2C plaorm • Remember that Wangwang gives informaon about how to target sellers appropriately • Taobao breaks even six months about Tmall introduced © 2017 Tarun Khanna Taobao and Tmall+ Fast Forward to 2017 • Taobao – Dominated by small businesses and individuals – Gross sales generated in qtr ending Sept 2015: $69 bn • Tmall – Browse and Shop for higher quality items (Olay face creams and Burbery coats) – Gross sales generated in qtr ending Sept 2015: $43 bn but growing faster than Taobao sales • Focus on brand consciousness among increasingly well- off Chinese has led Alibaba to seemingly bet on Tmall going forward • Where do the brands come from? Tmall Global links American brands to “digital China” (e.g. Costcos found it much easier to open a storefront on Tmall global than create its own site) © 2017 Tarun Khanna Emerging strengths and some vulnerabili2es • Strengths – Mobile commerce. Taobao smartphone app dominated JD.com smartphone app 86%:5% – (1/3 of Alibaba’s orders come from smartphones) • Weaknesses – TMall has had mixed success. It has raised fees and lost some vendors even in mainland China • Traffic on Tmall Global is a frac2on of that on Alibaba's other marketplaces: The site ranks No. 311 out of about 3,500 in terms of popularity in China, while Alibaba's Taobao and mainland Tmall sites rank Nos. 2 and 5 respec2vely – Taobao loses in several ver2cals to Dangdang in books and to JD.com in electronics © 2017 Tarun Khanna Alibaba and JD.com • Remember Amazon ul2mately beat eBay. What about JD.com and Alibaba? (JD.com is following more of an Amazon model) • JD manages its inventory and logis2cs and can enforce quality much beuer, a ‘fact’ it has emphasized successfully in compe2ng with Alibaba • JD.com: Taobao’s tolerance of counterfeits takes price compe22on to an extreme extent and chases away quality from China © 2017 Tarun Khanna Alibaba Group JD.com Market Value (2016) $217 billion $30 billion Margins and Turnover Gross Margin % 66.0 7.9 Total Assets Turnover 0.33 2.12 Inventory Turnover NA 9.69 Growth Over Prior Year % Total Revenue 32.7 43.5 Gross Profit 27.5 76.6 Tangible Book Value 35.5 (29.6) Business Model: Online Marketplace e-Commerce Retailer Asset-light/Revenues mainly Direct Sales to consumers and adver2sing and commission fees distributors Outsources logis2cs to third Owns and Operates naonwide par2es logis2cs and fulfillment Sources: CapitalIQ, Datastream, 9/6/2017; Deutsche Bank Market Research 4-27-2016 © 2017 Tarun Khanna © 2017 Tarun Khanna © 2017 Tarun Khanna The BAT Trio of the (mobile) internet • Baidu (think search and Google), Alibaba (think mobile commerce on internet, and Amazon) and Tencent (think social media and Facebook) are the ‘big 3’ tradi2onally staying in their own sandboxes • But emergence of mobile internet has caused them to rush into each other’s territories – Alibaba Group’s launch of Yu’e Bao, money market fund, caused Tencent and Baidu to follow suit – Similar land grab with entertainment content © 2017 Tarun Khanna Alibaba and compe22on in financial services • Alibaba and Tencent own banks, insurers and wealth management products and have invested in on-demand services, so need access to mobile wallets • Coming clash in mobile payments © 2017 Tarun Khanna Alipay • Alibaba does NOT own Alipay, the controlling shareholder is Jack Ma (& colleagues). Alibaba gets 37.5% of profits of Alipay (~10% of Alibaba’s profits come from Alipay currently) • October 2014 Alipay/ fledgling Apple Pay form alliance • Alipay app’s fingerprint func2on extended to iPhone users. Helps Alipay spread overseas; and helps Apple combat Samsung/ Xiaomi in China © 2017 Tarun Khanna What can derail Alibaba and Jack Ma? • Megalomania • Governance © 2017 Tarun Khanna Jack Ma, megalomaniac? • “If banks do not change, let’s change the banks” …..to disrupt inefficient state-run banking system – Fund launched by Alipay, Yu’e Bao, drew in $100 billion (maximal interest rate on 1-year term deposit in banking system 3.3%; with Yu’e Bao get double that and immediate access – Banking arm MYBank competes with Tencent Holdings’ online bank WeBank © 2017 Tarun Khanna Jack Ma, megalomaniac? • Healthcare – Mul2 billion $ aempt to create an online pharmacy giant, and a Healthcare IT enterprise • Another ‘small’ problem to tackle – Environmental degradaon • And if that isn’t enough, control over media? – Alibaba is “the biggest entertainment company in the world” because of millions spend 2me on its sites looking around – Purchase of video streaming, movie 2cke2ng, crowdfunded film produc2on, and buying Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post © 2017 Tarun Khanna Why did Alibaba list in New York, not Hong Kong? • On paper, HK seems even stricter, eg no dual class shares allowed, whereas that’s what Jack Ma wanted and got in New York • But New York has other ‘brakes’ on the ‘high speed’ governance – Short sellers – Aggressive Media (Jon Stewart show) – (Entrepreneurial) Lawyers and Li2gious culture – Independent judiciary and prosecutors going aer white crime recently • It’s the Ecosystem that maers © 2017 Tarun Khanna How Powerful can you get in China? • China Raps Alibaba for Fakes --- AccusaIons of Lax Enforcement Date to Before Record IPO; Company Blasts Government – By Carlos Tejada 29 January 2015 The Wall Street Journal • Since then, mutually conciliatory noises have resulted in a détente • When Alibaba bought SCMP, Hong Kong press expressed dismany that it would compromise SCMP’s editorial independence since Alibab would ul2mately be conciliatory to the CCP • Can the CCP be complacent about an enty that engages directly with 500 million users? Open queson ….. © 2017 Tarun Khanna Summary + What is Alibaba’s BIG Innovaon? • Overcoming ins2tu2onal voids – “In the U.S., e-commerce is what I call the dessert – it’s supplementary to the main business because the infrastructure for doing business is already so good. It is very difficult for e-commerce in the USA to grow, to develop, to surpass the tradi2onal side of business. But in China, because the infrastructure of commerce is bad, e-commerce becomes the main course.” (Jack Ma, in ‘Tech in Asia’ March 2013) • How? Overcoming trust deficit in China • Alipay, Trustpass, Wangwang, Yu’e Bao • Building fabric for entrepreneurship © 2017 Tarun Khanna Trust contributes to Surplus Creaon • Remember, Adam Smith in Theory of Moral Sen2ments, 1759 • Markets cannot exists without fairness, altruism, and trust • Most decisions are made through a back-and- forth between ‘passions’ and an ‘impar2al spectator’ (think long-term planner coupled with conscience) © 2017 Tarun Khanna Who captures the surplus? • Entrepreneurial Team led by Jack Ma • Small business users, individual consumers • Investors? – Unclear. • But not an army of service providers – Migrant labor hired to deliver packages for example © 2017 Tarun Khanna Transaction Facilitator! Credibility Enhancer! Information Analyzer! Aggregator! Adjudicator! © 2017 Tarun Khanna Western and Equivalent Chinese Social Media Site © 2017 Tarun Khanna American PoliIcal Science Review Page 1 of 18 May 2013 doi:10.1017/S0003055413000014 How Censorship in China Allows Government CriIcism but Silences Collecve Expression GARY KING Harvard University JENNIFER PAN Harvard University MARGARET E. ROBERTS Harvard University We offer the first large scale, mul9ple source analysis of the outcome of what may be the most extensive effort to selecvely censor human expression ever implemented. To do this, we have devised a system to locate, download, and analyze the content of millions of social media posts origina9ng from nearly 1,400 different social media services all over China before the Chinese government is able to find, evaluate, and censor (i.e., remove from the Internet) the subset they deem objeconable. Using modern computer-assisted text analy9c methods that we adapt to and validate in the Chinese language, we compare the substan9ve content of posts censored to those not censored over 9me in each of 85 topic areas. Contrary to previous understandings, posts with nega9ve, even vitriolic, cri9cism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collecve acon by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobiliza9on, regardless of content. Censorship is oriented toward aNemp9ng to forestall collecve acvi9es that are occurring now or may occur in the future—and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent. © 2017 Tarun Khanna Science, 6199, 345: 1-10, 2014 Reverse-engineering censorship