Alibaba's Institutional Messaging App DingTalk Ups The Ante As The Ecommerce Giant Plays Catchup To Tencent's WeChat

Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA and Tencent Holdings Limited TCEHY are two big behemoths among Chinese tech firms.

The ecommerce giant is upping the ante in one of its businesses that overlaps with Tencent's.

What Happened: Alibaba enterprise messaging app, called DingTalk, has managed to increase its users from 400 million in January to 500 million in August, the South China Morning Post reported, citing the company.

DingTalk has over 19 million institutional users, including enterprises, schools and other organizations, the report added.

In comparison, Tencent's WeChat Work, the enterprise version of its WeChat app, reportedly had 130 million active users and 5.5 million institutional users in January.

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DingTalk Way Behind WeChat: Despite making strong inroads into the institutional market, DingTalk is still way behind Tencent flagship personal messaging app WeChat.

WeChat boasts 1.2 billion users, 140% more than DingTalk's users. Alibaba has been aggressively pursuing measures to increase adoption of DingTalk, including upgrading the service to attract a wide variety of users, the report said.

Last week, DingTalk reportedly launched a new version of the app with more than 20 functions, including "intelligent note-taking" and mini apps.

Alibaba shares closed Friday's session up 0.73% at $168.

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Photo: Courtesy of alibabagroup.com