Alibaba Group’s new partnership and mapping service

News this week: Alibaba.com, the B2B subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has reportedly entered into a partnership agreement with Pakistan-based Pearl Shine Group International (PSGI) to help small businesses from Pakistan to market their products and services overseas. According to media reports, Alibaba.com reportedly has 650,000 Pakistani small and medium enterprises members.

Separately, Alibaba’s consumer-focused division Taobao, has launched a new mapping service in China to provide information about local businesses and the discounts and services available to its users – although Alibaba has made no official announcement about the new service.

From mobile devices, the mapping service is available to users of Taobao’s Local Life mobile app, Taobao Travel and price comparison app, Etao Guangjie. The service is also accessible via map.taobao.com.

An Alibaba spokesperson was quoted saying, “The Taobao Lifestyle platform is simply making use of maps provided by the AliCloud mapping service, which was already available via the Aliyun OS when it was launched last year, to display locations of offline stores and services.”

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