| Chinese mainland E-commerce giant Taobao is the world's first organisation to offer an MBA course for e-traders. Taobao revealed that over 300 people submitted applications, but since the course was only recruiting 50 students, the company had to screen candidates for enrolment.
Successful candidates had to possess a trading entity with an annual turnover of Rmb8 million and employ at least 10 people.
The first five-day course began on 12 April. In view of its popularity, Taobao is planning a second intake.
CEO and President Lu Zhaoxi presented his views on the development of China's e-commerce sector with students.
Statistics compiled by Alibaba's research centre revealed that there were 63 million e-traders on the Chinese mainland by the first half of 2009 and their transaction volumes were steadily on the rise.
Taobao's own transactions have doubled from year to year since the firm's growth to become an Rmb200 billion enterprise in 2009, underlining the rise of e-commerce as a sector of growth.
However, the development of e-commerce is not without its growing pains. Studies show that many e-traders are faced with new challenges in team management, finance, work flow optimisation and other aspects, as their businesses expand. That is said to be due to a lack of corporate management experience at senior level.
The MBA course is aimed at addressing such problems. Using Taobao's experience and foresight in e-commerce as the basic teaching material, the course is tailor-made to suit e-traders' actual needs and to effectively enhance their management capabilities.
The list of lecturers includes Taobao's Chief Financial Officer, Zhang Yong and Alibaba's Senior Vice President and Yahoo China's General Manager.
They gave their views on the sustainable development of e-commerce in the light of the current state of e-commerce, alongside experts from top educational institutions.
On the enrolment prospectus, Taobao's students ran companies with annual sales volumes ranging between Rmb10 million and Rmb60 million.
The regional distribution of students was also interesting. The majority came from the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas, totalling 35 (or 70%) of those taking part.
Traders from Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Shandong and Anhui provinces made up the remaining 15. This coincided with the trend for the spread of e-commerce from the eastern coastal regions inland.
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