Alibaba Singles Day sales race past $ 18 billion

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has reached USD 18 billion in sales for Singles' Day in just 12 hours, the company revealed.

According to reports, the company has a running sales counter on its Alizila news website, which details the "gross merchandise volume" that it has fulfilled orders for so far.

The company has already surpassed last year's sales for Singles Day with nearly USD 18 billion USD in merchandise sold already, about USD 10 billion of which was sold in the first hour of the day.

In two minutes, Alibaba's gross merchandise volume totalled USD 1 billion and in the next 40 minutes, the site's sales had surpassed USD 7.5 billion.

The e-commerce giant said that the first delivery was made in 12 minutes after midnight.

Alibaba hit USD 5 billion in transactions in less than 15 minutes on Singles Day this year as compare to the cyber shopping event back in 2015, where it took the Chinese e-commerce company a full hour to reach USD 5 billion in transactions.

According to reports, within the first 30 seconds, 97 percent of sales were generated through mobile devices.

Alibaba also hosted a star-studded gala enlisting tennis star Maria Sharapova and American rapper Pharrell Williams to pump sales, Bloomberg reported.

The e-commerce giant uses the China's Singles' Day into a cybershopping event along the lines of Black Friday in the United States.

China's Singles' Day is an entertaining festival widespread among young Chinese people, to celebrate the fact that they are proud of being single.

This festival has become the largest online shopping day in the world, with Alibaba's sales at USD 5.8 billion in 2013, USD 9.3 billion in 2014, USD14.3 billion in 2015 and over USD 17.8 billion last year. 

-ANI