Taobao was founded on May 10, 2003, with investment from Alibaba Group.

Taobao is the largest online retail business district in Asia, and its goal is to create the world's preferred online retail business district. By combining communities, underworld, and gangs to increase the stickiness of online shoppers, and adopting the latest group shopping model, Taobao's business spans two major parts: C2C (Consumer to Consumer) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer).

In October, the third-party payment tool "Alipay" was launched, using the "guaranteed transaction model" to make consumers trust transactions on Taobao.

The total transaction volume in 2003 was 34 million yuan.

In 2004, "Taobao Wangwang" was launched, linking instant messaging tools with online shopping.

In 2005, Taobao surpassed eBay and began to leave its competitors far behind.

In May, Taobao surpassed Yahoo Japan and became the largest online shopping platform in Asia.

In 2005, the transaction volume exceeded 8 billion yuan, surpassing Wal-Mart.

In 2006, Taobao became the largest shopping website in Asia. In that year, Taobao realized a possibility in China for the first time - the Internet is not only an application tool, but will eventually become a basic element of life. Survey data shows that nearly 9 million people go to Taobao every day to "go shopping".

In 2007, Taobao was no longer a simple auction website, but the largest online retail business district in Asia. In that year, Taobao's annual transaction volume exceeded 40 billion, becoming China's second largest comprehensive shopping mall.

In 2008, Taobao's new B2C platform Taobao Mall (the predecessor of Tmall) was launched; the Wenchuan earthquake donation platform was launched, raising a total of more than 20 million donations from netizens; in September, Taobao's monthly transaction volume exceeded 10 billion.

In 2009, it has become China's largest comprehensive shopping mall, with an annual transaction volume of 208.3 billion yuan.

On January 1, 2010, Taobao released a new homepage, after which Juhuasuan was launched, and then eTao.

On June 16, 2011, Taobao, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, was split into three independent companies, namely Taobao, which continued the original C2C business, Taobao Mall (tmall), a platform-based B2C e-commerce service provider, and eTao, a one-stop shopping search engine. In the new structure, the three companies after Taobao's split are operated by the mechanism of president and chairman.

On the morning of January 11, 2012, Taobao Mall officially announced that it would be renamed "Tmall".

On March 29, 2012, Tmall released a new logo image.

On November 11, 2012, Tmall made a fortune on Singles' Day, claiming to have sold 10 billion in 13 hours, setting a world record.

On April 20, 2012, the cover article of the 8th issue of IT Times Weekly exposed that there was collective corruption among the employees of Taobao, a well-known Chinese e-commerce company. In this regard, Tao Ran, vice president of Alibaba Group, said that individual incidents should not be exaggerated into group corruption. Tao Ran said that Taobao set up an anti-corruption department two years ago to investigate reported behaviors and deal with them after verification.

On November 11, 2012, Taobao and Tmall platforms set a new record for online shopping in a single day at 19.1 billion yuan.

In 2013, Alibaba was adjusted to 25 business units. Alibaba, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Alibaba (China), purchased preferred shares and common shares issued by Sina Weibo for US$586 million, accounting for about 18% of the total shares of Sina Weibo after full dilution, and carried out the combination of Taobao e-commerce and SNS to the end.

Extended information:

Jack Ma, male, was born on September 10, 1964 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. His ancestral home is Gulai Town, Shengzhou City (formerly Sheng County), Zhejiang Province. He is the main founder of Alibaba Group. He is currently the chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, a director of SoftBank Japan, the chairman of the China Council of the Nature Conservancy and a member of the global board of directors, a director of Huayi Brothers, and a director of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation.

He graduated from the Foreign Language Department of Hangzhou Normal University in 1988. In the same year, he worked as an English and international trade teacher at Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Industry. In 1995, he founded China's first Internet business information publishing website "China Yellow Pages". In 1998, he became the general manager of China International Electronic Commerce Center Guofutong Information Technology Development Co., Ltd. In 1999, he founded Alibaba and served as the CEO and chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group.

On May 10, 2013, he resigned as CEO of Alibaba Group and continued to serve as chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group.

On June 30, Jack Ma was elected co-chairman of the Global Internet Governance Alliance Council.

In October, he was invited to serve as a special economic affairs adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron.

On May 8, 2016, Jack Ma served as chairman of the China Entrepreneurs Club.