Amazon and Alibaba have approached 5-year-old startup Wish, but the CEO seems ...

Maybe you haven"theard of Wish, the five-year-old e-commerce startup.

But all the major e-commerce players have. Sources close to the companysay thatAmazon and Alibaba have talked about buying itin the past year. And the price they"re talking about is jaw-dropping.

The most interesting rumor isthat Amazon recently offered $10 billion in cash for Wish and Wishwalked.

$10,000,000,000!

So is the $10 billion rumor true?

Here"s what we"ve pieced together after talking to a half-dozen people familiar with, and close to, the company.

Wish has been described as the e-commerce company Fab was supposed to be. It sells cheap butstylish productsby optimizing social channels likeFacebook. Its layout resembles Pinterest, but on Wish everything is for sale, and you"ll be hard-pressed to find an item that costs more than $25.

The company has reportedly raised close to $600 million and been valued at $3 billion or more by investors. But it hasn"t gotten much press because CEO Peter Szulczewski doesn"t want or need any. When we first reached out to Szulczewski, in December 2014, he wrote that he was "humbled and a bit surprised" to find himself on Business Insider"s radar, since he and the company "try to keep a very low profile."

WishWish gets merchants to bid on prices so it can bring the lowest-cost items possible to its users. Alibaba uses a similar approach.

Everyone we"ve spoken with agrees. Alibaba and Amazon have had acquisition talks with Wish in the past year.

One personclose to top players at Wish says Amazon recently offered $10 billion in cash to buy the company, and Wish"s CEO walked away. Another person who"s friendly with top Wish people said they"d heard the $10 billion rumor as well, but thatnumber may actually reflect a new valuation Wish is raising at, not an acquisition offer.

We circled back to the first person who said that the $10 billion rumor was "clearly conveyed" as an all-cash Amazon offer, not a fundraise.

The most likelycase is that Wish has had "soft" talkswith Alibaba and Amazon.But the discussionsnever resulted in aserious written bid for the startup for two reasons:

• Szulczewski doesn"t want to sell.
• If he were to sell, he wouldn"t budge unless the offerwasmore than $10 billion.

Amazon and Alibaba aren"t willing to pay more than $10 billion for Wish, a person with knowledge of the situation says. But Szulczewski thinks he can grow his startup to at least $100 billion in gross sales or one-quarter the revenue ofWalmart in which case Wish would beworth more than $10 billion.

Wish is already on track for annual gross revenues of single-digit billions,people familiar with the company say. And the margins are really good. Onepersonestimated that Wishtakes home roughly 11%ofgross revenue,so it"s possible the company is profitable on net revenue of around $1 billion.Wish is a lean operation we"re talking less than a few hundred employees. LinkedIn says its headcount is between 11 and 50 people.

The company gets merchants in China to compete on price so it can offercustomers unbelievably cheap items.

One person familiar with the business says Wish has about 100 million usersacross its platformand works with over 100,000 merchants, it"s popular in the US and Europe, and it"s become masterful at converting customers through social channels. The key to Wish"s success seems to be its customer-acquisition strategy and its data-driven approach.Most of Wish"ssales are on mobile, not desktop.

When reached for comment, Amazon said it doesn"tcomment on rumors or speculation.

Wish and Alibaba did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/wish-rumored-to-reject-acquisition-offers-from-amazon-and-alibaba-2015-11

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Alibaba hits the brakes on India expansion drive

Bloomberg

Brakes on: Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, centre

Chinas Alibaba has slowed its previously aggressive Indian expansion drive, putting a mooted deal with smartphone group Micromax on ice and delaying other investment plans in the face of problems in its home market, according to people familiar with the situation.

Founder Jack Ma has put Indias rapidly expanding ecommerce market at the heart of Alibabas plans for global growth over the past year, snapping up stakes in local start-ups PayTM and Snapdeal.

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But as Chinas largest internet company grapples with the countrys slowing economy and regulatory probes over fake merchandise sold on its sites, Alibaba has reined in plans for a rapid series of further Indian deals, the people say.

In particular, it has mothballed plans to take a minority stake in Micromax, Indias largest smartphone maker by revenue, ending talks that began this year.

Discussions involved the purchase of a stake of up to 20 per cent in the Indian group, at a valuation of more than $3bn. Alibaba and Micromax declined to comment.

They have become much less aggressive, said one person familiar with Alibabas thinking. As well as Micromax, they had plans to invest in entertainment and services businesses in India but they are fine without it for now.

On his first visit to the country in November 2014, Mr Ma said he planned to invest more in India.Alibaba hoped the countrys small but rapidly-expanding online economy would go on to match the explosive growth that powered its own rise in China.

Mr Ma has since returned for further visits to explore Indias ecommerce market, which is set to be worth $300bn by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs estimates.

Over the past year Alibaba and its affiliate companies spent $680m for a 40 per cent stake in PayTM, a payments start-up, and picked up a smaller holding in Snapdeal, an online marketplace.

Although the Chinese group still plans to expand in India, it is now taking a gradual approach, according to another person familiar with its strategy. They are still open to discussions for the right deals, they just arent pushing it, the person said.

Alibaba has faced pressure recently from Chinese regulators worried that faulty or counterfeit goods are sold on its platforms. The issue was in particular focus in the run-up to Singles Day, Wednesdays annual shopping bonanza that netted Alibaba a record $11.2bn of sales.

The slowing economy and more regulatory pressure certainly have Alibaba pulling its focus back to the domestic market, said Mark Natkin, founder of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting. In the medium term they still want to be a global player, along the lines of Google or Apple, but they may now be taking it slowly.

Alibabas shares have lost a fifth of their value this year as Chinas economy has weakened. However, better than expected results for the quarter to September calmed some fears.

Alibaba wants to signal their global ambitions by talking about going to places like India and America, said Muzhi Li, an analyst at Mizuho Securities in Hong Kong. [But] Alibaba probably can benefit more from efforts to defend their existing market in China, rather than investing overseas.

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Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93a5ed28-8841-11e5-9f8c-a8d619fa707c.html

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