Alibaba Group to Host Launch Ceremony for the 2015 11.11 Global Shopping Festival with Priorities of Globalization, Logistics, and Mobile and Omni-Channel Commerce

Hundreds of global brands, trade associations and country representatives to participate

Hangzhou, China, October 12, 2015 – Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA) today announced that it will host an official launch ceremony to kick off the 2015 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, which will be held at its headquarters in Hangzhou, China on October 13. This year’s global shopping festival will focus on globalization, logistics, and mobile and omni-channel commerce.

More than 100 international brands and retailers, countries and trade associations will be represented at the ceremony. Alibaba Group executives including Jack Ma, executive chairman, Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer, and Michael Evans, president, will also participate in the event.

The ceremony marks one month until this year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, the world’s largest 24-hour online sale, which in recent years generated more online sales than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. For the 2015 Festival, Alibaba Group is working with international brands, foreign governments, trade associations, global retailers, and brick-and-mortar stores in China to make the event a paramount global shopping experience for consumers, whether they are online or offline.

Tomorrow’s ceremony and the Global Festival this year will highlight Alibaba’s international plans, showcasing Alibaba as the premier global platform for brands and retailers around the world to directly engage with hundreds of millions of China’s consumers. The Global Shopping Festival will also demonstrate the power of Alibaba’s ecosystem, including the unparalleled scalability of its logistics model, and its latest innovations in mobile and omni-channel initiatives.

Highlights from last year’s 11.11

November 11, 2014 was the biggest global shopping day in history as measured by gross merchandise volume (“GMV”) , with over US$9.3 billion settled through China’s leading mobile and online payments platform Alipay. The results were largely driven by the volume of transactions made over Alibaba’s mobile platforms. Other highlights included:

• More than 27,000 merchants from around the world participated, including 42,000 global brands such as Nike, Levi’s, Proctor & Gamble, Costco, Muji, Desigual, ASOS and The North Face, among others.
• Shoppers placed some 278 million orders in the 24-hour period.
• 42.6% of total GMV was transacted on mobile devices, up from 21% of total GMV during the 11.11 sale in 2013.
• Consumers from 217 countries and regions were able to purchase more than 1 million products available on Alibaba platforms.

The 11.11 shopping festival began in 2009 with participation from just 27 merchants as an event for Tmall.com merchants and consumers to raise awareness of the value in online shopping. Some refer to the event as the Singles Day Sale because it falls on Singles Day, a day for Chinese young single people to celebrate their independence by treating themselves to a special purchase. Six years later, 11.11 has become a global event with participating merchants in the tens of thousands, buyers in the millions, and total sales in the billions.

For additional history and facts from last year’s festival, as well as the latest news and updates on the 2015 11.11 Global Shopping Celebration, please visit Alizila.

For background on Alibaba’s business model, strategy, and products and services, please visit Alibaba Defined.

¹ Gross merchandise volume (“GMV”) is the total amount settled through Alipay on Alibaba’s China and international retail marketplaces

About Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company is the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume. Founded in 1999, the company provides the fundamental technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help businesses leverage the power of the Internet to establish an online presence and conduct commerce with hundreds of millions of consumers and other businesses.

Alibaba Group's major businesses include:

• Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com), China's largest online shopping destination
• Tmall.com (www.tmall.com), China's largest third-party platform for brands and retailers
• Juhuasuan (www.juhuasuan.com), China's most popular online group buying marketplace
• Alitrip (www.alitrip.com), a leading online travel booking platform
• AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com), a global online marketplace for consumers to buy directly from China
• Alibaba.com (www.alibaba.com), China's largest global online wholesale platform for small businesses
• 1688.com (www.1688.com), a leading online wholesale marketplace in China
• AliCloud (www.alicloud.com), a provider of cloud computing services to businesses and entrepreneurs