Alibaba has said it will freeze hiring this year to slow the pace of expansion as Chairman Jack Ma thinks the 30,000-strong labor force is enough to maintain operations.
The e-commerce giant aims to serve more than 2 billion consumers by 2019 and Alibaba will only hire when someone leaves his current position, according to a transcript of an employees' meeting that Ma held in Beijing last week.
The company is also boosting growth overseas as Ma says globalization is a key strategy for its future development.
Alibaba Group plans to expand in overseas mobile Internet markets through its mobile business group, covering Internet browser, map and navigation as well as game to mobile search, said Yu Yongfu, president of Alibaba mobile business group.
"It will be a breath of fresh air for Alibaba and the whole Chinese dot-com space," Yu said, stressing the mobile business group's rapid growth without support from Alibaba's e-commerce and payment units.
The firm aims to raise its footprint in overseas markets with a new PC-based Internet browser which was released yesterday, targeting India and Indonesia, Yu said during the Global Mobile Internet Conference in China.
Alibaba has invested in health care, digital entertainment, online mapping and smartphone manufacturing.
