Alibaba, Tatas mull partnership to enter online retail in India

Alibaba Group president Michael Evans and global managing director K. Guru Gowrappan recently met Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry to discuss a partnership to cater to the online retail market in India.

The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba approached Tata Sons for a partnership as it had plans for development projects in the country's rapidly growing online retail market.

According to sources, both companies discussed and covered areas such as logistics, offline stores and omni-channel to support Alibaba's core e-commerce business.

"We have been exploring very carefully the e-commerce opportunity in this country, which we think is very exciting against the backdrop of Digital India," A Tata Sons spokesperson said at an event in Delhi.

To put things in perspective, Alibaba sold goods worth $377 billion (nearly Rs 25.08 crore) in 2015, compared with around $16 billion (nearly 1.06 lakh crore) by all of India's e-commerce companies put together, according to Morgan Stanley.

Tata Group, a salt-to-steel conglomerate with combined sales of $108.78 billion (nearly Rs 7.24 lakh crore), has been associated with several other consumer brands in the country. The biggest coffee chain Starbucks also entered India through an alliance with Tata Global Beverages.