On-demand is an infrastructure for the future of retail says Alibaba CEO, Daniel Zhang. He envisions a world where virtually every product, even pharmaceuticals, will be available to be delivered on-demand 24-hours a day to customers.

Daniel Zhang, Alibaba CEO, discussed the future of retail on CNBC International:

On-Demand Delivery to Power the Future of Retail

On-demand delivery is an infrastructure not only for the food delivery business. This is also an infrastructure for the future of retail. In terms of food delivery, I think today more and more young people need these services and they either don’t have time to cook or they simply don’t don’t cook so the people need this food delivery.

When we look at this on-demand delivery network this also can serve many other product categories. For example, people can order some medicine from some pharmacies at night if they catch a cold. This could be an infrastructure for the future of integrated digital business.

Every Business Will be Powered by Cloud

Cloud computing is our long-term strategy and we strongly believe that every business in the future will be powered by cloud. We are very happy to build this crowd infrastructure in the new digital era and support all the business to go digital. I think cloud will be the main business of Alibaba in the future.

Voice is the Next Entry Point of the Internet

We believe that voice is the next entry point of the Internet. If you look at the history of the Internet we have the PC times and people got into the internet by clicking. Then you have the mobile internet where people go to the internet by scrolling the screen. Now it comes to the voice age where people can go to the virtual world by our voice.

That’s why we started to work on Tmall Genie and we strongly believe this could be an entry point in the living room when people want to go to the virtual world. This is also how people not only enjoy the services by the voice but also can monitor the equipment and the facilities in the home.

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