Alibaba Singles’ Day Sale highlights include Taylor Swift’s performance and beats last year's $30 billion record already

• Alibaba Singles’ Day Sale has crossed last year's record to rake in $30.8 billion GMV.
• In the first minute and a half of the sale, it recorded $1 billion GMV.
• Taylor Swift performed in the Countdown Gala celebration.

The much talked about Alibaba Singles’ Day sale is on, the first one after Jack Ma resigned from the Chairman position, and it’s on its way to break previous records.

Within just 10 hours of the sale (which began at midnight in China local time), Alibaba had made $30.8 billion Gross merchandise value, which is the total value of merchandise sold, and the number keeps increasing every minute. With this, Alibaba beats it last year's $30 billion record.

But that’s not it – In the first minute and a half of the sale, it recorded $1 billion in GMV and $12 billion in the first one hour.

There was also a Countdown Gala celebration, where Taylor Swift performed apart from Chinese stars like Ayanga and teen sensation Jackson Yee from the band TFBoys among several others. The earlier years of the gala has seen stars like Daniel Craig, Mariah Carey, Maria Sharapova, Miranda Kerr and Kobe Bryant, attend the event.

The Singles’ Day sale which began in 2009, has been an event to watch out for globally. Over the years, it has gained prominence and has also become more popular than the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the US.

This is the first edition of the sale after Jack Ma stepped down as Chairman, and so all eyes are on the Executive Chairman andCEO Daniel Zhang.

Alibaba had recently announced its second quarter earnings with a 40% year-on-year jump in revenue at $16,651 million.

“We aim to serve over one billion annual active consumers and help our merchants achieve over RMB10 trillion in annual gross merchandise volume by end of fiscal 2024. We will continue to invest in the user experience and innovative technology to create new value for consumers, as well as the millions of enterprises undergoing digital transformation in the new digital economy,” Zhang had then said.