As the COVID-19 virus continues to grip the world, Chinese online retail giant Alibaba has seen its revenues jump by 37 per cent to US$34.2 billion for the three months ended December 31, 2020.

The company, founded by Jack Ma, saw net income increase by 52 per cent. Active customers grew to 779 million in the December quarter, with Alibaba booking US$75 billion in sales.

The big winner was its cloud business which has grown 50 per cent year over year to US$2.5 billion for the quarter under review.

“Based on the third-party studies that we’ve seen, the China cloud market is going to be somewhere in the US$15 billion to US$20 billion total size range and the US market is about eight times that. So the Chinese market is still at a very early stage,” said Joe Tsai, Alibaba executive vice chairman.

“We feel very good, very comfortable to be in the China market and just being in an environment of faster digitisation and faster growth of usage of cloud from enterprises because we’re growing from such a small base, about one-eighth the base of the U.S. market.”

Alibaba is currently undergoing government regulatory scrutiny surrounding antitrust issues leading to the suspension of the company’s parent’s IPO and the wiping off of 15 per cent of Alibaba’s share value.

Ma, who had last year made critical statements about the Chinese government, only recently resurfaced about concerns were raised about his absence for the public eye for three months.