Younger middle class consumers helping drive growth for Alibaba

Alibaba, the world's largest e-commerce services provider, has posted strong financial results for Q3 ended 31 December 2015: revenue jumped 32% from ¥26.2bn ($4bn) a year earlier to ¥34.5bn ($5.3bn) while the number of annual active buyers grew to 407 million. CEO Daniel Zhang put the company's growth down to China's middle class, particularly the younger generation who have "little interest in saving compared to their parents" as well as rural development and cross-border e-commerce. According to CFO Maggie Wu, the strength of Alibaba's core business means it can invest in extending its operations in China's largest cities, rural expansion, increase global imports and building a world-class cloud computing business.   

Alibaba chaiman Jack Ma points to a doll at a fair in Germany as his company announced a huge jump in its quarterly results on Thursday. Alibaba recently bought the South China Morning Post. Photo: Xinhua