Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group has rewritten the rulebook on ecommerce. Focusing on merchantry between small businesses, its site facilitates small and large transactions across the world, rivalling eBay as the globe’s largest online retail portal. Serving millions of customers, the site’s brokers trade on everything from raw materials to finished goods in more than 40 industry categories. In 2013, the company’s flagship website averaged $30m in daily transactions. Multilingual, the site facilitates trade easily and with a variety of different features. As part of the Alibaba Group, the retail arm is linked to similar sites, including Taobao, Tmaill, Juhuasun, eTaom, Laiwang and many others.

Total sales (2012)

$170bn