Alibaba Group Holding , China 's biggest e-commerce company , had nearly 102 thousand full-time employees by the end of March 2019 . While not the biggest employer in the country , Alibaba is the most valuable listed internet company in China and among the largest ones in terms of revenue . What is Alibaba Group ? The company was founded in Hangzhou , China in 1999 by a group of people led by a former English teacher Jack Ma . It started as an online platform helping small Chinese businesses to reach global buyers . Alibaba Group went public in September 2014 and broke all records with a total IPO of 25 billion U.S. dollars . Today , the company operates a number of e-commerce , retail , internet service , and fintech-related businesses all around the world . It is best known for its Alibaba.com B2B e-commerce platform ( including 1688.com and AliExpress.com segments ) , C2C marketplace Taobao , B2C online retail platform Tmall , and online payment platform Alipay . Who are Alibaba 's employees ? As of the beginning of 2019 , Alibaba had more employees than Yahoo and Facebook combined . The majority of them work in the company 's operations/customer service and research & development departments . As of 2018 , over one-third of Alibaba 's senior management were female and around 45 percent of all staff were under 30 years old . Every year on May 10 , Alibaba group celebrates Employee Appreciation Day . All employees , also called Aliren , bring their families to the company campus for an all-day carnival .
