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.
Masayoshi Son, Yahoo! Japan’s chairman, at a news conference said it will open China’s booming e-commerce market to small businesses’ transactions on Yahoo! Japan and will mean a combined transaction volume of $42.5 billion and 260 million users for both firms.
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.
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.
Reuters reports 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.