China's e-commerce giant Alibaba set yet another record for the Double 11 shopping festival, hitting 10 billion yuan ($1.44 billion) in sales just 2 minutes and 5 seconds after the annual November 11th online shopping spree began at midnight Saturday.
In 2017, it took shoppers on Alibaba's Tmall 3 minutes 1 second to rack up 10 billion yuan in sales, breaking the previous year's record of 6 minutes and 58 seconds.
By noon Sunday, 167 brands reported sales 100 million yuan during the shopping spree. By 15:49 pm, total sales broke the record of last year's entire-day sales for the Double 11 shopping carnival.
The gross merchandise volume increased 27 percent from last year to CNY213.5 billion (USD30.7 billion), the Hangzhou-based firm said on its website.
