Alibaba is structurally relegated to acting as a glorified trade directory
Karthik Sridharan · 20VC: What Makes A Great marketplace Founder, The Key Metrics Marketplace Success Is Centred On & 3 Ways To Prove To Investors You Are A Domain Expert with Karthik Sridharan, Founder & CEO @ Kinnek · Oct 7, 2016 · at 12:56
Karthik Sridharan is the Founder and CEO of Kinnek. He discusses Alibaba's structural limitations in B2B transactions relative to Kinnek's deep interaction marketplace model.
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“They're mostly focused on an East Asian supplier base, and mainly in mainland China. So most of Alibaba's buyer base is in Europe and America, and they're connecting with suppliers in East Asia. What that ends up meaning is that The currency issues, tariff issues, logistics issues, just general trust efficiency of dealing with a factory, 10,000 miles away, language barriers, all these things kind of joined together to create a really, really difficult situation for buyers to have any more deep interaction than simply just messaging. And that's fine because Alibaba has made a great business out of that, but end up getting relegated to more of a glorified trade directory.”
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