Cainiao in a Nutshell
Amid rapid business transformation and economic growth in the early 2010s, Cainiao was founded to address existing market gaps exacerbated by the rise of eCommerce and surging consumer demand at the time.
We were driven by a vision to foster eCommerce growth through a global logistics network that provides efficient cross-border and local deliveries, superior customer experiences, and supports global trade flows through industry-wide digitalization. By integrating existing resources from last-mile couriers and other leading logistics players, we defined a new business model that leverages technology to aggregate and optimize industry resources.
Today, we have embarked on a journey to offer greater transparency and visibility to drive impactful change that extends beyond the boundaries of the logistics industry and across the entire value chain.
Our beginnings
In the early 2010s, amid the start of the eCommerce boom, the industry had numerous independent logistics players, as well as internal supply chain stakeholders within the same organization that worked in silos. This often-meant asset under-utilization, work duplication, and other unproductive processes that resulted in undue inefficiencies.
These shortcomings stood out during peak periods such as major shopping festivals and seasonal holidays, where the surge in goods demands and parcels led to challenges such as shortages of warehouse space, personnel, and delivery vehicles. This then caused bottlenecks along the eCommerce logistics value chain, which translated to slow deliveries and poor customer experiences.
Most recently, the pandemic and geopolitical events further amplified inherent legacy issues, causing instability in global supply chains. These disruptions were pivotal in accelerating the digital and industrial transformations that were already set in motion.
The rising popularity of digital platforms and growing proportion of digital natives in recent years are fueling the emergence of new technologies and solutions, particularly focused on smart logistics and last-mile delivery optimization. Alongside shifts in consumer behavior and rising customer expectations, logistics players are realizing the need to adapt and constantly innovate to stay ahead of the curve.
The road ahead
“Today’s best performance is tomorrow’s baseline” — This onward-and-upward mindset outlined in Alibaba’s core values has helped the team tide through our most challenging moments and thrive when we are ahead. This Alibaba spirit embodies the need to constantly challenge and reinvent ourselves, and strive to excel. As we celebrate the successes in the past decade which laid a strong foundation for us, we are also immensely grateful for the strong partnerships forged, as well as the support and trust from our merchants and consumers.
As we start a new chapter in Cainiao’s journey, we want to take the opportunity to reinforce our commitment in key areas that we envision will bring about a huge impact to the world.
Smart logistics — Driving industry-wide digitalization
To keep pace with the rise of the digital economy and smart nations globally, we saw a pertinent need to transform an otherwise traditional industry and push the boundaries of innovation.
Our plan to create a holistic ecosystem to benefit logistics firms, businesses and consumers globally, continues to be at the heart of what we do at Cainiao.
From the launch of our autonomous logistics robots for last mile deliveries, to the digitalization of post stations with smart lockers, AI-based smart route management for couriers, and electronic shipping labels for real-time parcel tracking, we continue to be an inclusive platform that makes it easy for merchants to do business anywhere, and for customers to benefit from a more comprehensive and transparent offering.
Green supply chains — ESG practices embedded across our value chains
Sustainability has always been core to our business since our early days. With a partner- and customer-centric approach, we continuously introduce new innovations and initiatives to deepen sustainability efforts along the value chain.
This ranges from our AI-based smart packaging algorithm that can accurately determine the optimal carton size for each parcel, thereby reducing packaging materials for 530 million parcels in a year, resulting in a 15 percent reduction in packing materials used, to electronic shipping labels that helped to save 400 billion pieces of paper in six years.
We have taken a step further to foster green practices among consumers in order to create a wider ripple effect in communities. Recycling stations set up at Cainiao Post stations and domestic express delivery stations spanning 315 cities in 31 provinces across China, incentivized consumers to recycle their eCommerce packaging at Cainiao Post stations — encouraging a more environmentally conscious community. An estimate of more than 100 million express delivery carton boxes can be recycled and reused annually.
By tapping on our expertise and partnering with businesses and communities, we will be able to achieve greater heights in our ESG initiatives in the long run.
Just like how we have always adopted a purpose-driven mindset since our founding, our operations moving forward will look to build on existing capabilities and successes that we have achieved thus far to bolster eCommerce growth and global trade.
Together, we will usher in a new era of even smarter and greener logistics and supply chain ecosystem.
