HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - China's Taobao and Yahoo! Japan said on Monday they will cooperate and launch two online platforms to cross sell into each others' markets, a move that will boost the reach of Asia's two e-commerce giants.
Taobao, owned by China's largest e-commerce company Alibaba Group, and Yahoo! Japan plan to offer 8 million and 50 million product listings, respectively to their markets, when the platforms go live June 1.
It will open China's booming e-commerce market to small businesses transacting on Yahoo! Japan and will mean a combined transaction volume of 290 billion yuan ($42.5 billion) and 260 million users for both firms, said Masayoshi Son, Yahoo! Japan's chairman, at a news conference.
"Now I can say that the Internet development countries are in Asia," said Son.
"Together when we join strengths, we will be able to beat eBay in transaction volume," Son said.
The cooperation confirms a Reuters story in March that Alibaba would form a tie-up to help merchants from their online marketplaces sell into each others' markets.
This tie-up would be part of a broader alliance between Alibaba, whose shareholders include U.S. Web giant Yahoo, and Softbank, which apart from its investment in Alibaba is also a co-investor with Yahoo in Yahoo! Japan.
The cooperation is also the first indication of Taobao's ambitions to expand overseas. Jack Ma, Alibaba Group's chief executive, said logistics and language could be amongst teething problems facing the platform.
However, the firm has no intention of going public or entering the U.S and European markets any time soon, said Taobao's Chief Executive Jonathan Lu.
"We have to look at the chances, the opportunities. From the market perspective, we are interested, but in the near term our focus is on the China market," Lu told Reuters on the sidelines.
China's search leader Baidu announced in January a joint venture agreement with Rakuten, a top Japanese online retailer, to launch a virtual shopping mall targeting the world's largest online population.
Web commerce in China has surged in recent years, as buyers look to the Internet for better deals from more reliable suppliers in the nation's highly fragmented e-commerce sector.
Reporting by Melanie Lee and David Lin; Editing by Jacqueline Wong
Reuters India
