Following Alibaba, its online merchants now eye listings

Three Squirrels employees are busy working on Nov 11, 2014, Alibaba's  yearly promotion day.[Photo/IC]

Three Squirrels is among the emerging group of hundreds of online merchants and internet brands that are looking for funds for expansion.

The companies are eyeing listing on the stock market. They were all born and raised in China's booming e-commerce industry, which pulled in nearly 4 trillion yuan in sales last year from more than 400 million shoppers.

Like Three Squirrels, most of them do not own any factories nor employ production line workers. Some of them do not even sell physical products but peddle services, expertise and technologies.

Their strength is their deep understanding of Chinese online shopping behavior and e-commerce, which helps them to outperform many of the bricks-and-mortar leaders in an incredibly short period of time.

To be sure, there are 44 public companies in China that are involved in businesses related to e-commerce. None of them got listed purely because of their online business.

According to China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, nearly 100 merchants on its online marketplaces have plans to go public.