Alibaba announces plan to create a music service arm for Chinese consumers. (Photo : Reuters)
In a nation where Quick Response codes, or QR codes, are still popular, China's Alibaba Group Holdings announced on Tuesday that it will invest in an Israeli startup by the name of Visualead.
The Tel Aviv technology company specializes in QR codes that can be scanned by anyone with a smartphone.
While U.S. consumers no longer use QR codes in their daily lives, the technology is still very popular in China as well as Japan.
Chinese consumers are familiarized with scanning QR codes with their handsets to perform a range of tasks, including the downloading of apps and coupon redemption. Unique QR codes have even been assigned to the social-networking accounts of Chinese users, which means that other users can scan the code to follow them online.
Tuesday's news represents the first time that Alibaba has invested in an Israeli company since it made investments in overseas locations such as India and the U.S.
The new arrangement means that Alibaba can use Visualead's products to further develop its shopping sites, apps, cloud-computing platform and movie production studio.
Visualead will also work with Alibaba's Mashangtao service so that Taobao and Tmall merchants can use the startup's codes to provide shoppers with tracking technology for their ordered packages.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Alibaba will also use Visualead's QR technology to combat the sale of fake goods on its e-commerce platforms. It is expected that unique visual QR codes will be integrated into products so that it will be straightforward to intercept fake items.
Meanwhile, Visualead will build its offline-to-online technology with the resources attained from Alibaba. Prior to the Alibaba partnership, the Israeli company raised a total of $2.4 million over two funding rounds.
