Taobao started in May 2003

Taobao is the largest online retail and business district in the Asia-Pacific region, founded by Alibaba Group in May 2003. Taobao is a popular online shopping and retail platform in China, with nearly 500 million registered users and more than 60 million regular visitors every day. At the same time, the number of online products per day has exceeded 800 million, and an average of 48,000 products are sold every minute. By the end of 2011, the peak daily transaction volume of Taobao reached 4.38 billion yuan, creating 2.708 million direct and full employment opportunities. With the expansion of Taobao's scale and the increase in the number of users, Taobao has also changed from a single C2C online market to a comprehensive retail and business district including C2C, group buying, distribution, auction and other e-commerce models. It has become one of the world's largest e-commerce trading platforms.

On March 15, 2016, the 315 Gala exposed that Taobao merchants had cheated consumers by brushing orders.

On March 29, 2016, Alibaba Group CEO Zhang Yong clarified the strategy for Taobao's future: community, content and local life are the three major directions.

On August 8, 2018, Alibaba Taobao revealed that it will enter the MR (mixed reality) shopping field and will launch a product - Taobao Buy at the 2018 Maker Festival.

On December 12, 2019, the "Huiju.com 2019 Hurun Brand List" was released, and Taobao ranked fourth with a brand value of 300 billion yuan.