Alibaba Athens Event Aims to Boost Greece – China Online Trade

Greek entrepreneurs keen on opening up to the Chinese market will have a chance to learn more about export opportunities and meet with representatives from the world’s largest e-commerce group, Alibaba, who will be in Athens during a September 14 event at the Hilton Hotel.

An initiative of the Athens Chamber of Tradesmen in efforts to stimulate entrepreneurship, push for expansion into new markets and pave the way for new growth prospects, the event has already attracted over 600 participants active in exports and tourism scheduled to also hold B2B meetings.

While in Athens, Alibaba executives will also hold talks with government officials. Athens Chamber of Tradesmen President Ioannis Chatzitheodosiou will welcome the Alibaba delegation at the chamber offices on September 13 for a press conference and will later attend an event at the foreign ministry where they will meet with Alternate Foreign Minister Dimitris Mardas and representatives of 60 business bodies.

Economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis, Alternate Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura, Managing Director Alibaba Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece Rodrigo Cipriani Foresee and Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) secretary general Dimitris Tryfonopoulos will be addressing the event, which will offer simultaneous translation in Greek and English. A Q&A session will follow.

Founded in 1999, Alibaba is a Chinese e-commerce company active in consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals as well as providing electronic payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services.

The Chinese online sales platform, serving some 10 million small business customers and 423 million users, aims to offer services to Greek exporters interested in expanding into the Chinese market with standard products for end consumers as well as tourism offerings, among others.