China’s Alibaba Group Testing 60-Minute Drone Deliveries of Goods

A total of 450 residents of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou will be able to test the new Alibaba drone delivery service.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Chinese Alibaba Group has launched a three-day trial of drone deliveries aiming to deliver goods within an hour, the company announced Tuesday in the microblog of its online shopping platform Taobao.

In the post, Taobao offered 450 individuals in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou a chance to try out parcel deliveries on February 4-6.

"Taobao is launching drone delivery services with a delivery time of one hour," Taobao said in the post. "From February 4 to 6, residents of several districts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou will have a chance to test the service. A total of 450 people will be able to try out drone delivery."

Alibaba said in an email cited by Forbes on Wednesday that at this stage the company was still unsure about future deliveries using this method, as this was its first drone delivery campaign.

According to Alibaba founder Jack Ma, some 25 million parcels are delivered in China daily, a figure projected to reach 200 million in 10 years.

In 2013, the company announced its intention to invest more than $16 billion over a period of five years to set up a logistics network facilitating the delivery of goods to consumers in China with 24 hours.

The e-commerce company Alibaba was founded in 1999. In 2014, it was China's most successful company according to a ranking by Fortune China, which followed the company's initial public offering making, where it raised a record $25.3 billion.