Alibaba Singles’ Day sale hit 25.3 billion, double than Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales combined

November is the month of big sales around the world. Alibaba holds Singles’ Day sale on November 11 and some other countries hold Black Friday and Cyber Monday to celebrate sales across the world. Black Friday is considered as starting of Christmas shopping season worldwide.

Alibaba hit a record $25.3 billion of sales in 24 hours of Singles’ Day, breaking its own record of $17.8 billion last year. This year, it broke its own record in just 13 hours as it made $18 billion of sales in first 13 hours. Overall sales saw a 40% increase in sales when compared to 2016. Last year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the US were $12.8 billion combined, which means that this year’s Singles’ Day sales were double than both of them combined.

All types of items were put on sale by Alibaba through different sites including AliExpress. The event was kicked off by Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma. The opening gala was attended by different celebrities including Pharrell, Nicole Kidman, Jessie J, and Maria Sharapova. The event was broadcasted on three Chinese TV networks as well as Alibaba’s video service.

The reason behind the success of Alibaba sales is its availability across the world. Ali Express delivers to at least 225 countries and most of the items come with free shipping. You can even purchase some items as low as $5 and most of them come with free shipping as well.

Alibaba CEO, Daniel Zhang, says that they are planning to go even more global and India is a very important market for them in globalization. Here’s what he had to say.

“Globalisation is one of our key strategies for Alibaba. As part of this strategy, India is a very important topic. India is a very important market for us to look at. Before entering any new market, we ask ourselves how we can help the local market. For a market like India, the key aspect of our strategy is to help the local enterprises grow.”

He further added:

“India has great opportunity for New Retail to take off. In some countries, e-commerce may not take the traditional route. They skip a phase just like some markets skipped PC/desktop to go to mobile. In those markets, e-commerce 1.0 is skipped and it goes directly to e-commerce 2.0. But this depends on technology, data, and innovation in retail formats.”

Did you purchase something on Singles’ Day sale?