China’s largest e-commerce platform, Alibaba, posted an increase in its annual Singles Day sales this year. While Alibaba had revealed daily sales figures for every Nov. 11 each year, this year its data included Nov. 1-10 presales figures, which reached 372.3 billion yuan ($56.26 billion). Presales combined with Nov. 11 sales totaled 498.2 billion yuan.

What began as a celebration of singlehood in the country has become the world’s biggest one-day online sales event, with Alibaba seeing sales grow from 50 million yuan in 2010 to a whopping 498.2 billion yuan in 2020.

The latest figure includes sales from the company’s multiple platforms including Tmall, AliExpress and Taobao.

This year, the company’s shopping event lasted four days, Nov. 1-Nov. 3 as well as Singles Day, which falls Nov. 11.

South Korea was the third-largest global seller this year for Alibaba, after Japan and the US.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)