Alibaba invests $732 million in Taobao

Alibaba Group is investing $732 million in Taobao, China’s largest consumer e-commerce company. The move should cement Taobao as the shopping destination of choice for Chinese consumers.

Taobao has created an e-commerce ecosystem consisting of 80 million users, over 1 million sellers, and 200 million items for Chinese consumers to select from. The new funding, spread over five years, will be used to build a more advanced platform for merchants, while continuing to offer its services for free to buyers and individual sellers.

Chinese companies are expected to take advantage of the economic downturn in building up, aside from carefully investing. Reports had it that some companies are even launching plans for recruitment. The Alibaba Group even announced that it is hiring about 4,000 new employees this year.