The online era fundamentally changed the way people shop. Companies as Amazon and Alibaba laid out the basis of e-commerce.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in the early 1990s, and clients reacted well to Amazon’s services. In May 1997, Amazon developed the initial public offering. The issue price was $18 per share at the moment. After 21 years, the stock touched the historical $2,000 mark in August 2018. This is the way Bezos became the wealthiest man on the planet and Amazon turned into a $1 trillion firm. Amazon’s stock has increased more than 1000 times since its beginning. On December 12, AMZN stock returned 14% year-to-date.

Alibaba, often referred to as the Chinese version of Amazon, has not such a different story. Alibaba was first funded by the CEO of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, and it issued 2 different series of stocks. In 2014, Alibaba received a record-setting $21 billion of initial funding after listing ADRs (American depository receipts) on NYSE. In 2019, throughout the trade war between the US and China, Alibaba was confronted with a possible threat of becoming delisted. After some deliberation, Alibaba went forward using a second listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the end of November 2019 under the ticker 9988. Alibaba inventory rose by 6.5% on the first day of listing in Hong Kong. By November 2019, the Alibaba IPO was the biggest IPO recorded.

In December 2019, Saudi Aramco’s IPO surpassed Alibaba’s IPO record. The state-owned oil firm from Saudi Arabia draw over $25 billion in its IPO.

E-commerce business transformation

Each time a new technological invention springs upward, the companies that set the new technology up the fastest, are the most successful.

Amazon and Alibaba are great examples of businesses embracing the online world. The world wide web has made it feasible to search for products and services while still sitting in your home. Nowadays, emerging technologies such as fintech are catapulting e-commerce to another level.  Everyday consumers are able to instantly purchase their desired goods thanks to fintech. These are only a couple of examples of how e-commerce has adapted to newer variants of this technology. Lots of new start-ups have emerged and are interested in finding methods to add value to the e-commerce industry using modern technology.

With blockchain, enterprises can streamline daily operational tasks. The technology is highly transparent and secure. It could drastically reduce costs.