Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves Is Not a Fable in China

Filed in archive Private Equity on August 11, 2005

Everyone's talking but no one's listening. Yahoo's 1 billion dollar 40 percent stake in Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce firm does not illustrate that a Net bubble is back, but it does give new meaning to the title character, Ali Baba from the Arabian Nights, who accesses treasure from a magical password.

Following so soon on Baidu's huge IPO success, it makes one wonder, if indeed Internet analysts and investment bankers are dwelling in bunkers and suffer from memory loss.

All right, it's true that China has a 100 million Internet users, but has anyone taken a pulse or completed recent surveys on the actual buying power of these Net users? The answer is yes. China's online revenue -- which includes sales from advertising and from Internet gaming and wireless services --grew 35 percent last year to $1.1 billion and will rise 30 percent in 2005, according to MindShare, the media-buying unit of London- based WPP Group Plc.

Alibaba, along with the huge treasure or rather investment from Yahoo, gains exclusive Chinese rights to the super-monetized Yahoo brand. The package of Yahoo China's assets includes Yahoo's search technology, the Yahoo China website, its communication and advertising business, as well as 3721.com, a Chinese language search engine.

I have met the affable and stealth CEO, Jack Ma at several Internet conferences and he is certain to retain his leadership post in the new enterprise. Ma maintains that this investment infusion will enable them to spend more on the search engine. No doubt about that Jack, after all, it's all about easy access is it not?