Headlines

Alibaba Invests $2.9B in Chinese Hypermarket

E-commerce behemoth seeks to compete in brick and mortar

Published

6 years ago

November 21, 2017

kmpeyton

Hangzhou, China-based Alibaba announced today that it would invest $2.88 billion in Chinese hypermarket operator Sun Art Retail Group Ltd (Hong Kong).

Fortune reports that the e-commerce platform will acquire a 36-percent stake in Sun Art, which is the country’s largest operator of hypermarkets. The move is apparently a play to compete with Walmart in the brick-and-mortar space.

Walmart currently operates 450 physical stores in China, while Sun Art currently operates 400 under banners of Auchan (Croix, France) and RT-Mart (Taiwan).

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