I am quite certain that most of us are pretty much aware of that. It is also safe to assume that almost every one of us might have either heard of or used some of the services of the companies mentioned in this list.
The ecommerce landscape is dominated by the worlds’ elite – Billionaire businessmen like Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos, and others, are in a relentless race to dominate the ecommerce realm.

After all, the ecommerce industry is without a doubt the most lucrative business of the 21st Century.

Now, one might assume that he or she knows pretty much everything about the companies listed below, but I am pretty certain that you might not be aware of the secret sauce that made these companies so influential. Let’s shift our paradigms a little, and shed some light at these corporations from an entirely fresh and quirky perspective.

The list is not all Western; and no, Alibaba is not the only Chinese success story:

1. Amazon

Only if you are living under a rock or were in a Captain America sort of coma for a while, could be the case when you might not have heard about this giant-little bird.
This Seattle based company (rather a country) is now the most valuable business in the universe.
But this isn’t the only thing that makes headlines about Amazon. The now immortal CEO of Amazon is equally in the news, if not more. 2018 saw Mr. Bezos become the first centi-billionaire of the world. His net worth is estimated to be a whopping 137.1bn USD (meh!)as of 2019.

The X-Factor:
Amazons’ 1997 letter to shareholders, gives us a pretty good insight into the way Jeff Bezos functions. The letter tells us about the unrelenting focus the famous founder has maintained through the years, along with some invaluable lessons for all who are pursuing organizational excellence.

Here are a few highlights:

• Focus on delivering value:
  Too many companies today are focussed on maintaining slim profit margins, at the expense of keeping customers happy. Amazon, however, has always been laser-focused on providing value to their customers.“Since inception, our focus has been on offering our customers compelling value. We brought our customers’ much more selection than was ever possible in a physical store (our store would now occupy six football fields), and presenting it in a valuable, easy-to-browse, and easy-to-search format in a store which is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.”, explained Bezos.The fruits of this resolute mentality could be clearly seen 25 Years later.
• Customer First. ALWAYS. NO MATTER WHAT.
  Amazon as a company has always strived to keep customers at the helm of their business. Amazon’s emphasis on the long-term, as shown by the image above, has made investment decisions in the light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions. There are swarms of people that don’t agree with this approach. But then again, not everyone can build a business like Amazon.
• Never Ever Stop Learning
  Another critical reason why Amazon has rose-up to the top is their willingness to learn from their mistakes. In an interview, Bezos acknowledged the road ahead, “We now understand vastly more about online commerce then when Amazon.com was formed, but we still have so much to learn. Though we are optimistic, we must remain sharp and maintain a sense of urgency.” Every entrepreneur an businessperson should try and inculcate this in their business.
• Visualize the bigger picture 
  Rather than eyeing short-term profitability, Bezos has always tried to focus on long term gains. Their refusal to compromise has given the company purpose and direction – and has transformed Amazon from an online bookseller to a global retail empire.

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2. Walmart

Walmart is not just the world’s largest retailer (but Amazon is closing in), it is also the world’s leading private employer. Walmart products are manufactured in more than 70 countries. At any given time, Walmart is managing an average of $46.18 billion in inventory (Q: Oct 2018) throughout its 11,695 stores operating in 28 countries.
To top that, they have made several significant acquisitions (Flipkart being the most notable one) to compete with Amazon in emerging markets like India.

Walmart’s influence has been so immense that its impact on communities and society as a whole has been a consistent topic of academic interest in a variety of areas.

The X-Factor:
While Walmart is celebrating success, other major retailers are struggling.
Macy’s, the nation’s second-largest department store, had its share price plummet. For fiscal 2017, the retailer is projecting a 3.2 to 4.3% decline in sales.

J.C. Penney saw a 15.3% decline following its weak earnings report.
And Nordstrom, revered for its customer service practices, saw an 11.3 % drop, while Kohl’s slumped nearly 8% after disappointing financials.
SO, why is Walmart winning when most of the retail markets are tanking?

Two reasons:

• Stay true to your purpose:
  Sam Walton started Walmart in 1962 with one simple goal: to “help people save money so they could live better.” Despite its humongous size, the organization has never lost sight of its purpose. Even today, helping its customers save money and that is central to everything Walmart does.
  Their unwavering and laser-sharp focus makes them stand-out.
• Execute your purpose:
  Every employee of Walmart adheres to the vision of their late founder, Sam Walton, who believed, “Each Walmart store must reflect the values of its consumers and support the vision they hold for their community.”Everyone at Walmart is coherent with this vision. Every action Walmart takes at each and every level of the organization is to support the retailer’s purpose. From the no-frills corporate offices to its requirement that all employees, even executives, empty their own bins, every employee makes it a point of keeping its costs down, so it can sell products for less. This sheer resilience and the ability to execute its purpose is what distinguishes Walmart even now.Recommended Read: Best eCommerce Platform for Small Business – 2019

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3. Alibaba

Alibaba is hailed as “the Amazon of China” because of its dominance in the worlds’ most populous country. Much like Amazon, the founder CEO of Alibaba boasts a big fanbase and is touted as a global entrepreneur and visionary.

Alibaba has been killing it since the dawn of the 21st Century and is on its way to dwarf American stalwarts such as Walmart, Amazon, and eBay. It has already outperformed Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in key areas such as public cloud revenue growth.

With entities almost everywhere, (movie production, music and movie streaming, online learning, micro-blogging, online maps, travel booking, mobile apps, and so much more), the Alibaba Group has shown the world that China is a force to be reckoned with.

So what factors are accountable for this incredible growth in such a short span of time? Let’s take a look,

The X-Factor:

• A loyal customer base
  Alibaba doesn’t charge a single penny for admission and only charge for their services in marketing and technical support.
  This contributes to a significant and robust market-share made up of loyal customers. Alibaba’s profits mainly come through keyword biddings and advertisements, which represent 55% of its total profits.The second most important source of profit (amounting to almost 25%) comes from the technical services based on big data of the consumer behaviour.By eradicating intermediate fees and allowing sellers to register for free, Alibaba has been able to cultivate an online transaction habit among its customers.
• Being in the right place, at the right time
  Jack Ma has taken carpediem way too seriously. Alibaba has always excelled at identifying and seizing unique business opportunities and thus cleverly positioning itself as a leader in developing customer loyalty.For instance, The ‘Double 11’ festival falls on Nov 11, between Christmas and the Chinese National Day. Most consumers initially avoided shopping during that period, but Taobao (a subsidiary of Alibaba) has successfully transformed that day into an actual shopping festival.

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4. JD.com

If anyone in this world can lock horns with the likes of Alibaba is this ecommerce giant – JD.com has started giving Alibaba a run-for-money by introducing advanced technologies and drone delivery systems. They have also announced that they are planning to build more than 150 drone launch centers to improve delivery capabilities for consumers in rural areas.

Additionally, JD is in a strategic partnership with Walmart that was extended this year to further the integration of their resources, platforms, and supply chains within China.

Strengthened by initial failures, Richard Liu Qiangdong, took risks that paid off heavily, mounting his startup JD.com into the ranks of Chinese e-commerce giants.

“Within five years I’m 100 percent sure we will be the largest B2C [business to consumer] platform in China — we will surpass any competitor,” said Liu in a statement to Financial Times.

The X-Factor:

• Focus:
  “The key reason for [JD’s] success is focus,” Liu, (Founder, JD.com) said in a speech at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. “For us, e-business is everything.”
• Striving for innovation
  JD.com has established themselves at the helm of the newest technological innovations. Liu has even gone so far to predict his company won’t need any humans, and said, “I hope my company would be 100% automated someday…no human beings anymore, 100% operated by AI and robots.”

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5. Booking Holdings

Booking Holdings is the only travel fare aggregators that has made it to this list dominated by retail giants. But there is good enough reason to mention them here.

According to sources, Booking Holdings operates websites in about 40 languages and 200 countries. In 2017, consumers booked 673.1 million room nights of accommodation, 73 million rental car days, and 6.9 million airplane tickets using websites owned by Booking Holdings.

Booking Holdings stocks touched an all-time high of $2,229 per share in the first quarter of 2018.

Here’s Why We Believe Booking Holdings Is worth $2,229 per share,
The X-Factor:

• Market Reach:
  Booking.com operates websites in about 40 languages and in 200 countries, which is quite a feat, considering the market they operate in. Booking.com had a total of roughly 29 million reported listings, of which 23 million were listings in hotels, motels, and resorts and almost 6 million were listings in homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay.Their plans to consistently grow its reported listings, expand its real estate on its online accommodation, booking website, and improve its technological capabilities help them lead the herd.
• Customer Service:
  Judging from my personal experience and from those of others, Booking Holdings reliable customer service and their competitive pricing with easy-to-use user interface draws repeat purchases. Their business model thrives on repeat purchases. They aim to provide a better holistic travel experience to their customer, which reaffirms its value in the market.

Concluding View

One of the several interesting ah-ha moments we had while preparing together this analysis, and which surprised us the most was the level of consolidation that is undergoing within retail. Major acquisition activities included purchases by private equities and retailers buying Internet companies and other ecommerce players.

Like the recent acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart – Walmart outbid Amazon to buy a controlling stake (77% for $16bn) in the Indian ecommerce giant. The acquisition is touted as the biggest ecommerce deals of recent times. This goes on to show that big-box retailers are eyeing emerging markets like India to strengthen their foothold across the globe and at the same time get an edge over their competitors. The sudden shift in focus from markets like the US, Canada, and the UK is due to the stagnancy that the developed markets are witnessing.

EngineerBabu prides themselves in creating some of the best ecommerce solutions for businesses worldwide. Our dear Australian ecommerce customer Frankgreen has won several accolades such as the Best Design Award for not one, not even two, but three consecutive years!! Another ecommerce application Ondoor (an online supermarket app) created by developers of EngineerBabu have garnered more than 100k downloads in record time.
Contact Us right away for a free consultation! 

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One can expect to see more, not less of AI in the coming year. More jobs would be created rather than snatched away by AI; at least this is what tech giants are believing.
Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos in a statement on the future of AI said, “I predict that, because of artificial intelligence and its ability to automate certain tasks that in the past were impossible to automate, not only will we have a much wealthier civilization, but the quality of work will go up very significantly and a higher fraction of people will have callings and careers relative to today.”

How will AI develop in 2019?

Tech biggies like Alibaba, Google, and Microsoft, have come up with ambitious plans to ‘democratize‘ AI.
Google seems to be spearheading this revolution through its offering, Tensorflow. Tensorflow is helping small businesses and developers innovate through its open-source machine learning framework.
Another AI project by Google, Jigsaw leverages artificial intelligence to detect toxic comments and hate speech which has proven to be quite successful. This tool assigns a toxicity score to a piece of text based on numerous parameters.
In a bid to expand their horizons, Google is targeting emerging economies like India to expand its offerings. Indian policymakers and government officials are being trained in AI tools to streamline governance. NITI Aayog, a policy think-tank of the government of India, is partnering with Google to work on an array of initiatives to help build an Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem across the country.
Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog, said in a statement: “NITI’s partnership with Google will unlock massive training initiatives, support start-ups and encourage AI research through PhD scholarships, all of which contribute to the larger idea of a technologically-empowered New India,”
Through their collaboration, the organizations are planning to conduct hands-on training programmes to sensitize and educate lawmakers and technical experts in government about relevant AI tools and how they can be used to streamline governance.

On the same lines, Chinese tech behemoth Alibaba aims to bring sweeping and disruptive changes to China’s vibrant business landscape.
The machine intelligence technology division leads Alibaba’s efforts into AI. The division is working in areas including computer vision, speech recognition, optimization, and natural language processing.
One of the projects underway comes in the form of AliMe, an AI-enabled chatbot Alibaba developed that recognizes what people say both in terms of the text and the speech.
Not limiting the use cases of AI to just e-commerce and retail, Alibaba has ventured AI in farming and agriculture. On this front, the company is coming up with initiatives that can carry out a variety of things including, tracking animal IDs, detecting nutrition management, etc.
“Alibaba has changed the everyday life of the Chinese in China. Looking forward, our visionary leader, Jack Ma, wants us to be able to reach two billion consumers and to help 10 million businesses around the world. That’s a huge call, but we already have half of the platforms in place.” said Alibaba’s chief scientist Xiaofeng Ren, in a statement to CeBIT.
Meanwhile, Microsoft too is getting on the AI bandwagon. It’s CEO Satya Nadella in a bid to demonstrate that Microsoft can develop state-of-art services and still be a trusted provider for preserving user’s data has come up with a plan to expand the offerings of its digital assistant Cortana. Microsoft is targeting the office space to introduce a workplace-specific service to integrate AI into more of its enterprise services.

What will become increasingly important?

At the helm of all these AI developments that planned is, ‘Data.’ According to an industry insider, the benefits of AI can only be reaped if the data being used is fit for purpose.
Major AI companies are leading in this domain solely because of the fact that they have a lot of data for the algorithm to be trained on. For these techniques, to prove fruitful, it is extremely critical to have smart and relevant data. The performance of algorithms is more dependent on quantity rather than the quality of the data. Unless you can feed all the knowledge manually, it is vital to have an abundance of data for the algorithm to be trained on.
Artificial Intelligence rests upon the idea of mimicking how humans learn. All of our life experiences act as a set of data for us to learn. Thus a successful AI needs to mirror human behaviour to get successful.
Let us change the frame of reference and drill down to some of the significant developments that AI is definitely going to witness in 2019.

1. More jobs will be created by AI than lost to it

A utopian workless future will still be a distant fantasy in the coming year. It is still far from reality that the rise of machines will take over our jobs and cause a social strife all over the world.According to a Gartner report, as many as 1.8 million jobs would be lost to automation, especially in manufacturing, but also, 2.3 million would be up for grabs!
Let us consider a scenario to understand the situation better – Consider a garment factory, imagine a machine operator in a factory. Although a portion of his/her job could get automated, they will definitely have other roles, for instance, managing inventory and overseeing junior workers, which computers cannot supervise. Also consider the difference between a worker in a US garment factory and its counterpart in Vietnam: the American unit is more likely to be technologically forward, and a typical worker’s day will likely include a higher number of non-routine tasks that can’t be automated.
Undoubtedly, it is fairly accurate to say that non-manual jobs will be lost to AI, but more and more will be created as well! Repetitive tasks wouldn’t need to be performed by humans, and we will get more time to utilize our creative thinking and exemplary abilities to perform tangible tasks.
Industries such as education, IT services, public sector, especially healthcare will see a drastic infusion of new job opportunities pertaining to AI.
Although when it comes to doctors and lawyer, AI service providers have made a concerted effort to present their technology as something which can work alongside human professionals, assisting them with repetitive tasks while leaving the “final call” to them.

2. AI assistants will become a fixture in enterprises

AI is so intertwined in our everyday lives that we don’t even realize it, from a simple Google search to shopping at Amazon, or watching Netflix – AI is at work to provide us with the best-personalized experience.
With significant product releases from the likes of Apple, Samsung, Google, Amazon, and several other vendors – It is evident that people are embracing the comfortable and conversational modes of interaction.
2018 was the year of consumer voice assistant, 2019 will be the year where enterprises will see an influx of voice assistants in their day-to-day operations. Already, enterprises have begun realizing the importance of conversational technologies and are leveraging them as an extension of their businesses to support a wide range of tasks.
NLP (Natural Language Processing) and Machine Learning AI assistants will become increasingly efficient, thanks to their exposure to more and more information about how we communicate. By the end of 2019, these assistants will become so sophisticated that they would be able to anticipate our behavior, read our facial expressions, and even understand our habits.

3. AI will venture beyond tech companies

Many AI luminaries believe that AI has a much broader scope outside the tech domain. Citing use cases from a recent McKinsey report which found that AI will generate revenue of more than $ 10 trillion in GDP by 2030.
According to Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, “I think a lot of the stories to be told next year (2019) would be in AI applications outside of the software industry. As an industry, we’ve done a quite decent job of helping companies like Google and Baidu, but also Facebook and Microsoft — which I have nothing to do with — but even companies like Square and Airbnb, Pinterest, are starting to use some AI capabilities. I think the next massive wave of value creation will be when you can get a manufacturing company or agriculture devices company or a health care company to develop dozens of AI solutions to help their businesses.”
Many companies are recognizing the importance of catching up to AI technology, lest they be left behind. Here are 11 industries that are experiencing disruption.
     • Agriculture
     • Retail
     • Manufacturing
     • Law
     • Automotive
Although the domain that would reap the maximum benefits will definitely be healthcare. The following could be significant developments in healthcare:
     • Managing Medical Records and Other Data
     • Doing Repetitive Jobs
     • Virtual Nurses
     • Precision Medicine
     • Health Monitoring
     • Healthcare System Analysis
     • Drug Creation

4. SMEs will see a significant transformation in 2019

The small and medium-sized businesses are bound to see a major overhaul in 2019. This is precisely due to the recent commitments by tech giants – Organizations like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. are offering open-source frameworks that could easily be integrated with the current business processes.
In 2019, SMEs would no longer need to break the bank to incorporate AI into their operations. By leveraging existing platforms like Tensorflow (By Google), Keras, SparkMLlib, Caffe, etc., SMEs could save considerable cost and time which would have otherwise been required in developing and designing the products in-house.
Apart from this 2019 would also witness an influx of new AI-powered analytics tools. These tools are beneficial for businesses who don’t want to invest heavily in Artificial Intelligence and are still looking to reap the benefits of it. Analytics tools offer a gateway for small businesses to leverage the potential of AI even if they do not possess a vast amount of data.

Must Read: How Can AI Benefit Small Businesses

5. AI skills will become increasingly in demand

Organizations have been facing an impertinent issue of lack of technical skills required for developing to-the-mark AI products.

AI-related skills, as well as in related areas such as machine learning are in short supply today. Due to the relative newness of this technology, most educational institutions haven’t yet introduced a dedicated curriculum in their syllabus for AI and deep learning. This has created a crevice of sorts in the demand and supply of skilled AI professionals who are good with these skills.

As the democratization of AI is on the lines – It has to become viable for both, the tech giants and small and medium-sized businesses to recruit AI professionals easily.
Moreover, AI professionals require extensive on-the-job training, and as of now, there aren’t enough experienced AI professionals to take over leadership roles required by organizations who are just beginning to introduce AI in their services.
2019 would see tech giants such as Amazon and Google invest globally in expanding their talent pool. The Google Brain facility in Toronto is exclusively dedicated to research in AI; also Amazon has established an AI-focused lab in England and plans to build a similar facility in Spain.

Wrapping Up

The application and use case of Artificial Intelligence is beginning to encompass more and more businesses and is becoming a critical aspect of our everyday lives. As this article suggests, the use of machine learning is not just limited to the more conventional industries. Its use goes far beyond what one can imagine – Even bloggers nowadays are utilizing machine learning algorithms to engage users and improve their conversion rates.
Many companies already see the competitive edge AI-powered solutions can give and we can easily anticipate now more than ever the unusual uses of artificial intelligence in the future.
But the elephant in the room certainly needs to be addressed – The advancement and the evolution of AI comes with abundant risks. Due to its relative infancy, no proper regulations have been put in place to ensure that this gold mine doesn’t get exploited by notorious elements.

We urgently need to account for ethics and issues of bias during the development of these AI-based products, whereas today organizations easily overlook these things.

Considering how gruesome it is in finding the perfect tech partners for developing an efficient AI product. EngineerBabu houses a talented bunch of AI professionals who have proven their mettle by creating hundreds of successful AI products based on Machine Learning and Deep Learning technologies.

Contact Us for a free consultation call, we would love to guide you. In the meanwhile, check out some of our amazing AI products, right here.

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