Alibaba urges offline retailers to livestream on Taobao Live

Alibaba Group’s live streaming channel Taobao Live wants to attract more than 200,000 businesses to its platform this year.

The firm hopes brick-and-mortar retailers such as traditional wholesale markets will enhance the shopping experience of customers with the assistance of the platform.

Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, the firm waived service fees for platform onboarding in February, increasing the number of merchants using Taobao Live by 719 percent.

Recent figures have shown gross merchandise volume (GMV) generated by the platform swelled by 150 percent for the last three years running, with consumers spending more than 350,000 hours per day on the site. The surge had continued during the coronavirus outbreak period.

“The current healthcare crisis is a wakeup call for retailers,” said Taobao’s senior director of e-commerce content Yu Feng. “It has prompted many to accelerate their digital makeovers so that their businesses become more dynamic and resilient.”