Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund picks GoGoVan

Alibaba Group has announced the inaugural investments of its Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, committing money and resources to three startups including GoGoVan, Shopline and YEECHOO as the first batch of companies to receive minority investments from the fund.Online fashion rental and sharing site Yeechoo, on-demand logistics company GoGoVan and Shopline, an e-commerce platform for merchants, will all receive minority investments and assistance from Alibaba to help scale their businesses. They were chosen from over 200 other young companies who submitted applications to the fund.“These companies embrace technology to create value for the society, and we are excited to work with them and help them grow their businesses with resources available from the fund and Alibaba Group,” said Joseph Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group, in a statement.In addition to funding, the companies will have the opportunity to leverage resources from Alibaba’s ecosystem in order to scale and accelerate the expansion into other markets.Abby Zhang and Shan Shan, co-founders of YEECHOO, said: “We see the partnership with Alibaba as a major milestone in YEECHOO’s expansion plan and are very excited about it. It will enable synergies to be created between YEECHOO and other players in the Alibaba ecosystem. With Alibaba's strong support, YEECHOO will have a deeper impact across a wider audience as we promote a whole new lifestyle. It will also help more and more Hong Kong women create fashionable experiences at an affordable cost.”Tony Wong, co-founder and CEO of Shopline, said: “We believe the Fund’s investment presents a huge opportunity for Shopline to learn from the best. Alibaba is the world’s largest e-commerce company with expertise in payment, logistics and cloud services that are all core to e-commerce. This will help us strengthen our market positioning in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and fuel the next stage of our growth.”Steven Lam, founder of GoGoVan, said: “With the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund’s support, we look forward to growing our enterprise in Hong Kong to other markets and countries. We aim to continue our move it business philosophy by leveraging resources of the Alibaba ecosystem to our advantage in the logistics sector.”