alibaba group inaugurated its new office center in shenzhen on friday, singles' day, while the national shopping spree produced a one-day-turnover of 120 billion yuan (us$17.65 billion) on alibaba's e-commerce platform, the shenzhen economic daily reported yesterday.
according to sina.com, alibaba group signed a cooperation agreement with the shenzhen municipal government on friday to support the city's e-commerce and internet industry.
"alibaba emphasizes the manufacturing industry in guangdong, and we will focus on iot and smart manufacturing in shenzhen," said jack ma, alibaba's founder and chairman of the board.
according to the agreement, the city government will cooperate with alibaba and ant financial to set up internet service systems by using big data from various public service fields, such as the health care, social security and education sectors.
the alibaba center in shenzhen, located in the houhai area in nanshan district, occupies an area of 123,300 square meters. core teams from alibaba's various business lines will move into the office center in the near future. it's the e-commerce giant's third office center in china, following one in hangzhou and another in beijing.
data from the city's postal administration shows that 11 million parcels were collected in shenzhen on singles' day, doubling a usual day's total and marking a 46-percent increase compared with last year's singles' day. the city also became one of the top five cities in china regarding the number of parcels collected on singles' day.
on the eve of singles' day, a gala held by alibaba in longgang district was graced by celebrities from home and abroad, such as david and victoria beckham, scarlett johansson and kobe bryant.
the number of online deals made on alibaba's shopping websites hit a record high just nine minutes after midnight, with an average of 120,000 transactions being handled per second on alipay.
online transactions on alibaba's e-commerce platform totaled 120.74 billion yuan over the 24 hours that ended at midnight friday, which is a record for global retail in a single day, according to data provided by alibaba.
the latest data shows that online transactions in guangdong province totaled 14.7 billion yuan on singles'day, while 4.1 billion yuan worth of those transactions were made in shenzhen, making it the highest singles' day purchasing city in guangdong, according to the report. (zhang yang)
