Want to talk a little bit about
Alibaba and the model itself.
For many in the West,
if you will, they don't
necessarily understand it.
To the extent that I
can try to compare
it to Amazon which I know you
think is an unfair comparison.
One of the things that's so
fascinating to me is that
Amazon and Jeff Bezos have
pursued what might be described
as a very asset heavy
business model. They're buying
airplanes. They want to own the
entire supply chain from
beginning to end and Alibaba
has effectively an asset-like
business. It is very much in
terms of the retail piece of
this the opposite.
You don't want to own the
warehouses. You don't want to
own the logistics companies.
How do you think about that?
Is Jeff Bezos right or are you
right? And is there is there
going to be a meeting in the
middle?
I hope both are right.
And because the world can never
have one model.
If the world has only one
correct model,
the world is too boring.
We need to have all kinds of
models and the people
who do the model should believe
in the model. And I believe in
what I do.
Right.
The difference between Amazon
and us.
Amazon is more like an empire.
Everything they should control
themselves, by themselves.
And our philosophy is that we
want a bigger ecosystem.
Our philosophy is to empower
others to sell,
empower others to
service, empower,
make sure the other people
are more powerful than us.
Making sure with our
technology,
our innovation,
our partners,
our 10 million small business
sellers, they can compete
with Microsoft,
IBM.
Our philosophy is that we think
using Internet technology,
we can make every company
become Amazon.
Remember one thing,
today for ourselves,
our last year is
more than 550 billion
U.S. dollars.
To have people deliver for us,
we need 5 million people.
So how can we have five
million people deliver things
for us, to deliver the things
we sold?
The only way we do is empower
the service company,
logistics companies,
making sure they are efficient,
making sure that they make the
money, and making sure that
they can hire more people.
But without owning the whole
chain, can you do it as
effectively? The idea that
you're watching Amazon
being able to deliver things
now within hours literally.
We made
125
cities deliver within
one day last year.
Imagine 10 years ago,
deliver one thing from Beijing
to Hangzhou it takes about
eight days.
Now you can deliver things from
the Hangzhou to Beijing to
inner Mongolia some city
within 12 hours.
It's improving.
You can never expect these
things happen within 24 hours.
We have patience.
So I think...
Can imagine that within
the 11.11 Single's Day,
we sold $17
billion dollars
and by delivering more
than 600 million packages
within three days?
This is happening and this is
what we feel proud of.
It's not how much money we
make, it's not how powerful
we are,
we think because of the
technology,
we can make the technology
very inclusive that
every small company can use.
This is my dream because
I started my first business in
1992 in China
as a small business.
In order to borrow money
5000 U.S. dollars
from bank took me three
months to acquire.
Still failed.
So difficult to be a small
business. Today with the
technology,
we can empower them.
This is something I
want to do.