Small strides, big gains in the online world of trade

Alhough trust and value-added services have been the mainstay of Alibaba Group's success in China, they have not deterred it from expanding aggressively in overseas markets such as Europe.

The e-commerce giant, which deals with business-to-business online marketplaces, retail and payment platforms, shopping search engines and data-centric cloud computing services, is banking on connecting the struggling small and medium-sized businesses in Europe with the huge domestic market in China.

James Hardy, Europe, Middle East and Africa director of Alibaba, says he feels Alibaba will become an increasingly global platform in the future. "E-commerce reduces the physical boundaries among markets. Customer bases are also experiencing a shift to become more international," he says.