[HONG KONG] Chinese e-commerce giant Taobao is ramping up its presence in Singapore amid fierce market competition. It has boosted its Singles’ Day marketing spend in the Republic by around 30 per cent from last year, to more than 100 million yuan (US$14.9 million) in 2026.
Singles’ Day, also known as Double 11 or 11.11, is the world’s largest online and offline shopping festival, held annually on Nov 11.
Taobao’s Singapore country head Cora Cai said during a press conference on Friday (Oct 16) in Hong Kong that the localised capital injection funds consumer subsidies, free-shipping logistics, and physical advertising ahead of 11.11.
This is part of Taobao’s continued investment in the Singapore market, Cai said, which plays a big role in Taobao’s overseas business expansion. Compared with last year’s 11.11 season, Taobao doubled the amount it spent on physical advertising in the Republic.
Data released at the press conference showed that Singapore’s e-commerce gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached about US$29 billion in 2025.
Singapore’s e-commerce GMV is expected to reach US$309.6 billion in 2033, with a compound annual growth rate of 13 per cent.
The Business Times turns 50
Five decades of milestones and moments that shaped Singapore’s success story - told through our headlines.
Explore BT50
While Taobao did not disclose exact figures, it told The Business Times that for the 11.11 season in 2024 and 2025, it achieved double-digit growth in its Singapore market GMV.
Cai said that online shopping is no longer a novelty for Singaporeans, but has become integrated into consumers’ lifestyles.
Of those surveyed, 98 per cent said they accepted cross-border shopping, 60 per cent shopped online at least once a week, and 69 per cent shopped online monthly.
SEE ALSO
When asked about the scale of Taobao’s investment in Singapore, Cai did not provide an exact figure, but noted that it may not be directly calculated in monetary terms.
“Taobao’s investment in Singapore has been ongoing, and is not limited to advertising or large-scale promotional activities but covers multiple aspects such as offline activities, logistics, payment and local services.”
AI capabilities
At the same press conference, Ye Tian, general manager of Taobao Tmall Overseas, announced several upgrades to the application’s service experience, including new artificial intelligence capabilities.
Its new AI features, which include a localised recommendation algorithm and enhanced AI shopping assistants, comes as parent company Alibaba Group recently reported a 76 per cent drop in its Q1 net profit but 9 per cent bump in revenue, driven by global AI capital expenditure.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu previously said in an earnings call that the company expects to break even on AI-related capex within the next three years based on current average gross margins, after having already spent half of its 380 billion yuan AI investment planned for 2026 to 2029.
Alibaba has integrated its flagship AI assistant Qwen into Taobao’s platforms since May.
While Taobao did not disclose how much it invested in AI for this round of upgrades, Cai emphasised that AI-related capabilities are not a one-time investment project, but a continuously iterative process.
“While the foundational AI capabilities can fit all markets, the key is how we apply it locally,” she said. “For our team in Singapore, this means continuously feeding user information to the machine so it can learn and better predict local trends, allowing us to recommend exactly what consumers here want.”
Meanwhile, competitors such as Pinduoduo and ByteDance’s Douyin have been capturing market share by heavily leaning into deep discounts.
Addressing the fierce competition, Cai said that Taobao intends to differentiate itself through its curated supply system and wide catalogue of products.
“Consumers don’t buy an item just because it (is cheap) today; they buy it because they actually need it,” she said.
“We aim to upgrade our overall shopping guide capabilities so consumers can find what they want faster. Simultaneously, through AI and localised curation, we ensure that products genuinely suited for the local market are visible.”
Currently, many of these advanced AI conversational tools are optimised exclusively for Mandarin.
Taobao has confirmed that AI functions in other languages, including English, are in the pipeline over the next year, as the platform targets broader demographics across the Asia-Pacific region.