Turkey key market for alibaba.com, says exec

ISTANBUL

Asia’s largest online commerce portal, Alibaba.com, is cleberating the 13th anniversary of its founding. Turkish firms increasingly use the online platform.

Asia’s largest e-commerce portal sees Turkey as a strategic country with 413,000 local members, the global sales and expansion director of the online commercial platform has said.

Turkish business is different from others as businesses here both buy and sell goods over the portal, Timothy Keung told Anatolia news agency. The company is celebrating the 13th anniversary of its foundation.

Turkish firms shop the most in the machinery sector, followed by the food, construction materials, agricultural products, textiles, leather and chemical sectors, he said.

The company has local partners in five countries including Turkey, according to Keung.

Keung said Turkish customers buy and sell a lot and called Turkish suppliers and customers “incomparable” and Turkey’s positioning as “unique” because of its geopolitical location.

They see Turkey as a “strategic country,” he said. “We have two reasons for it. Firstly, where Turkey is located; its positioning between East and West. The second reason is the Turkish disposition. The Turkish both supply and sell. They take part in every operation of the portal.”

There are Turkish customers who have been working with alibaba.com for eight to 10 years, and the portal’s membership in Turkey is growing by 23 percent annually, he said. On average some 6,300 new members from Turkey join the portal each month, he added.

One of the world’s largest online commerce portals, alibaba.com holds 80 percent of the Chinese market. The firm has 29.4 million registered members worldwide from 240 different regions of the world.