Ant Financial launches SaaS collaboration tool for small businesses

Ant Financial, Alibaba Group’s fintech arm, has launched an enterprise application software called Yuque.

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The Google Docs-like tool is a cloud-based platform that supports file sharing and editing. Yu Bo, an engineer at Alipay, also told local media that Yuque hopes to help small businesses, including startups, do knowledge management.

A virtual workspace costs around US$850 per year for 500 users. But a company spokesperson told TechNode that the tool is available to public education institutions, nonprofit organizations, and startups for free.

Yuque, which can be translated into “communication sparrow,” has been incubated in Ant Financial since 2015 and used by 100,000 employees within Alibaba, according to the TechNode report.

Alibaba has been paying attention to enterprise software. Apart from Yuque, the company also developed DingTalk, an enterprise communication and collaboration platform, in 2016. It claims that the tool has served over 100 million users by 2018. In March, the ecommerce giant acquired Chinese productivity tool Teambition as it further ventures into the space.

Apart from Alibaba, other tech companies in the ecosystem are also developing their enterprise software products. Tech giant Tencent developed WeChat Work, an enterprise-grade office management platform, while TikTok creator Bytedance launched enterprise messaging tool Lark to compete.

According to International Data Corporation, the Chinese enterprise application software market is expected to reach US$388 million by 2023, with SaaS-based software accounting for 31.8% by 2023, up from 19.8% in 2018.