TMall Makes RMB Eight-Figure Investment in 360Shop
Ebrun, 6/05/13
Alibaba Group's B2C e-commerce site TMall recently completed a RMB eight-figure strategic investment in Hangzhou-based e-commerce SaaS provider Qibo Technology (360Shop). A source close to the deal said that TMall's interest had been piqued by 360Shop's "Vtao," a flexible system for quickly building off-platform marketing webpages that 360Shop developed in partnership with TMall itself. With Vtao, 360Shop offers independent B2C services for major TMall clients, outstanding merchants from sister B2C and C2C platform Taobao, and traditional brands. Off-platform marketing websites can help merchants attract traffic from sources other than TMall and Taobao's platforms.
Vtao allows brands and merchants to develop custom webpages to suit their needs, and features one-button synchronization with merchants' TMall store offerings, a shared TMall shopping cart, and functionality including customer relations management (CRM) and cross-store operations for multiple brands.
Editor's Note: For more background on this topic, please see "Rumor: E-Commerce SP 360Shop Lands Series A Funding" MD 3/29/13 issue.
Keywords: e-commerce service provider e-commerce Internet marketing funding B2C CRM TMall 360Shop Qibo Software as a Service