China's car market will grow close to 20 percent in the next five years, Alibaba-backed company predicts

KEY POINTS

• China's car industry will continue growing, and companies should embrace and integrate Jack Ma's "new retail" concept to better serve the market, said Alan Yuan, the CFO of SouChe.
• The CFO, whose company counts Alibaba as one of its largest investors, also said the traditional method of in-store purchases may be giving way to increasingly online experiences.

China's car industry will continue growing, and companies should embrace Jack Ma's "new retail concept," said an executive for a car trading site that's backed by the e-commerce billionaire's companies.

"The growth of the car industry, I think, is exponential. If you look at the China market, China's auto retail and finance market is probably at more than RMB 10 trillion, ($1.57 trillion)" Alan Yuan, the CFO of SouChe told CNBC.

"I think the growth rate for the next five years will be close to 20 percent," he predicted.

The CFO, whose company counts Alibaba as one of its largest investors, also said the traditional method of in-store purchases may be giving way to increasingly online experiences.

Cars at the end of National Day Holiday on October 6, 2015 in Beijing, China.

ChinaFotoPress | Getty Images

"I think everything is changing. As you know, Jack Ma mentioned about 'new retail.' I think the 'new retail' concept works well for SouChe," Yuan said, adding that the company has connected more than 100,000 auto dealers through digital systems.

The concept of "new retail," as explained by Ma, is the creation of smooth connections between offline and digital sales platforms.

That allows the company to "digitalize and bring online their operations." They can then boost their inventory as well as increase their operational efficiency, Yuan said.

Digitizing operations will also help customers who are unable to find the cars they have chosen in the brick and mortar stores in their vicinity, he said.

"Some of them may go to a store near their community, but the store may not have the car with them," Yuan said, adding that an integration of both the online and offline approach will be fundamental to the concept of "new retail."