You may never have heard of it, but chances are you’ve bought a heap of cheap things online sourced from it.

Having conquered China, online giant Alibaba is taking on the rest of the online world by launching on the US stock exchange.

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When it goes public on September 18, Alibaba is expected to dwarf the public listing of Facebook, and may even become the biggest share sale in history.

Analysts predicts the float will raise between $20 and $24 billion in investment, making its founder and executive chairman Jack Ma the richest man in China.

So what is it?

Mr Ma formed the company in his apartment in 1999 along with 17 other founders, initially as an Ebay for businesses.

It has since exploded into all kinds of online sales, whole and retail – as well as investment funds, media companies and even a soccer team.

Unlike its competitor Amazon, Alibaba does not own the products it sells. It simply facilitates trading.

The public offering could be good news for Yahoo! Inc. which has a 22.5 per cent stake, or about 524 million shares, in The Alibaba Group. The company has revealed that it will be sell 6 per cent of The Alibaba Group shares at the IPO.

‘Enormous beast’

In a video promoting the share launch, Mr Ma explained the purpose of his company is “to help merchants and customers find each other”.

• Click on the owl for a full list of companies owned by Alibaba 

And finding them it is, in China at least. Alibaba has the biggest chunk of the largest online retail market in the world. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, transactions on its many sites totalled $248 billion last year, more than those of Ebay and Amazon combined.

Alibaba has 80 per cent of China’s online shopping market, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Power Retail publisher Grant Arnott calls it an “enormous beast”.

“They brought the Amazon model into China, but put it on Chinese steroids, if you like, in terms of ability to tap the population there,” Mr Arnott says.

“Alibaba is a true colossus when it comes to digital retail worldwide, and the fact they’re about to globalise a bit more and really take on Amazon could certainly send a shiver down their spine,” he says.

“There’s no sign of it slowing down at the moment. It’s a beast that continues to grow explosively.”

How global can it go?

A household name in China, the company is only just starting to build its international reputation.

“[W]e are ready for the world to know us,” said Mr Ma in the promotional video, who hopes the company will last for at least 87 more years.

Global consultancy firm Capgemini‘s Phil Gomm has almost 30 years’ experience as a management consultant in the tech and banking industries. He agrees that Alibaba makes similar companies “pale into insignificance”, and is only just scraping the surface of growth opportunities.

But as Alibaba becomes more commonly known outside of business circles, Australian consumers could be a harder nut to crack.

Disposable consumer items will be the biggest threat to local distributors, Mr Gomm says, but products that need ongoing servicing and support should be safe from Alibaba.

Jack Ma and team shortly after launching the Taobao marketplace in 2003. Source: Supplied.

Three quirky facts about Alibaba

Anything is possible
You can buy almost anything on Alibaba, from life size dinosaurs to diamonds.

Aussie connection
Alibaba founder Jack Ma told Inc. Magazine he was so determined to learn English that when he was 12-years-old he biked 40 minutes every day to a hotel in Hangzhou’s West Lake district to offer his services as a free guide to tourists. He eventually was able to visit Australia for a summer vacation in 1985 with a family he met– an event he says changed his life and how he thought.

Australia Post deal
Alibaba recently signed an agreement with Australia Post that will allow local businesses to sell on Tmall.com to over 500 million Chinese consumers. It will also make it easier for Australian consumers to purchase items directly from China via Tmall.com and Taobao using Alipay.