Alibaba-ICICI tie up to help Indian online sellers with finance

On his recent visit to India in April, Chinese ecommerce giant’s Chairman Jack Ma expressed his intention to help small and medium businesses in India and empower to sell online more. Indian sellers selling on the Alibaba platform now can turn to ICICI Bank for their finance requirements.

ICICI Bank has tied up with Alibaba such that Indian micro, small and medium entrepreneurs (MSMEs) associated with Alibaba can make use of ICICI’s banking facilities like cash management, foreign exchange, bank guarantees and cross-border remittances.

“We are delighted to be the first bank in India to partner with Alibaba.com for their online trade facilitation centre,” ICICI Bank Executive Director Rajiv Sabharwal was quoted as saying in a press statement.

Banks collaborating more with ecommerce players

Last month, SBI tied up with Amazon to facilitate easier loan processing and cross-remittances for online sellers. It also tied up with Snapdeal to help SMEs with their finance and cross-border transaction requirements.

While ecommerce players stand to gain with such collaborations with a bank, the banks also want to latch on to the ecommerce wave to meet the aspirations of current business owners and keep them happy