Alibaba's Singles' Day Sales Hit $10 Billion in Less Than 30 Minutes, Touches $28.63 Billion So Far

Hangzhou (China): E-commerce giant Alibaba's Singles' Day sales on Monday hit USD 10 billion in less than 30 minutes of the event going live.

The Alibaba Group's various shopping platforms' total gross merchandise value (GMV) exceeded USD 10 billion in only 29 minutes and 45 seconds, while it took just 1 minute and 8 seconds to achieve a total GMV of USD 1 billion, after the Chinese e-commerce behemoth kicked off it's 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.

Within the first two hours, the total GMV exceeded 120.7 billion renminbi (USD 17.24 billion), surpassing the total GMV of 2016 11.11. In the first 14 hours and 30 minutes, the total GMV for Alibaba Global Shopping Festival stood at USD 28.63 billion.

The sales began at 0000 hours on Monday as per Chinese time. Some of the top countries selling to China by GMV included Japan, United States, South Korea, Australia, Germany, United Kingdom and France.

According to Alibaba, the number of orders created at the peak of the 2019 11.11 Global Shopping Festival reached 5,44,000 orders per second, which is 1,360 times that of the first edition of the festival in 2009.

The shopping festival, also known as Double 11, will draw to a close at midnight. Talking about the evolution of 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, Chris Tung CMO of Alibaba Group said the event has evolved from a promotional event into a global event.

This is a platform that began to support brands from the world including small and medium enterprises to engage with their online customers, Tung said. "As it gets bigger and bigger it becomes more effective for brands to do so (engage with their customers) and I think for the customers also the benefits have evolved," Tung told reporters here.

The event is also referred to as Singles' Day because of its date, 11/11 (November 11) consists of four 'ones', representing four singles, has emerged as the world's biggest shopping festival.

Last year, it raked in a record USD 30.8 billion in GMV, eclipsing the Cyber Monday sales of USD 7.9 billion and Black Friday sales at USD 6.22 billion. The 11.11 Global Shopping Festival Gala Celebration saw performance by Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and a host of other international and local celebrities.

More than 2 lakh brands from 78 countries and regions participated in 11.11 this year, with one million new products on offer. The event began in 2009 with a total of USD 7.8 million in GMV.