Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s entry into the U.S. runs through small businesses, the same path the online marketplace took in China, billionaire founder Jack Ma said in a wide-ranging speech outlining the company’s global ambitions.

The company is aiming to sell $1 trillion of goods through its platforms by decade’s end and may surpass Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 2015, Ma said in New York on Tuesday.

“Our vision is in 10 years, we will help two billion consumers in the world shop online,” Ma said at a luncheon for members of the Economic Club of New York. “Our globalization will still be focusing on helping small businesses and helping them do business in the most efficient way.”

In remarks touching on subjects from Buddhism to the importance of women in business, Ma touted Alibaba’s potential as a gateway for small U.S. companies seeking access to Chinese customers. Alibaba seeks to generate 40 percent of revenue from outside China, compared with 2 percent today, Ma said.

To reach $1 trillion of gross merchandise sales by 2019, Alibaba will need to almost triple the current volume of goods sold through its websites. Annual gross merchandise volume in year through March 2015 was 2.44 trillion yuan ($393 billion), an increase of about 46 percent from year earlier.

To do this, the company plans to add another 10 million small businesses to its platform in 10 years, using its infrastructure to connect consumers to sellers on a global level, Ma said. It also wants to provide 72-hour shipping to customers worldwide and 24-hour delivery within China, Ma said.

“We need more American products to go to China,” Ma said. “We have 100 million hungry people coming to buy every day.”

Alibaba’s shares, which are traded in New York, slipped 0.8 percent percent to close $87.58, giving the company a market value of about $216 billion.

International Purchases

Cross-border purchases by China’s Web shoppers increased to more than $20 billion in 2014 from less than $2 billion in 2010, with the U.S. the location of choice for clothing and personal care and baby products, according to EMarketer. The market research company predicts that China’s e-commerce market, which supplanted the U.S. as the biggest in 2013, will double in five years.

E-commerce in China grew faster than in the U.S. because China lacked physical stores, Ma said, adding that 80 percent of online buying and selling occurs through Alibaba’s platforms.

“You have all the shops offline, everything everywhere. In China, we have nothing, nowhere,” he said. “Here, e-commerce is commerce. In China, e-commerce is a lifestyle.”

U.S. Ties

Ma said he’s confident in U.S.-Chinese relations in the long run, which will help companies doing cross-border businesses. The two nations should tackle some issues together, he said, citing disease, poverty and climate change as examples.

“If U.S. and China can work on those projects together, the big countries, big companies and small companies will follow,” he said.

Ma said he’s been seeking to create an improved culture for Alibaba that will suit the needs of the future and the next generation, a task that he said gives him headaches. Ma, 50, said he’s been trying to identify a successor for a decade.

Many companies lack female senior managers, Ma said, adding that about a third of Alibaba’s top executives and 49 percent of employees are women. “Women make a big difference,” he said, citing “user friendliness” as an area where they are better, without elaborating.

Ma said that he doesn’t have time to spend his own money. As a billionaire, Ma said he has to manage his money with others in mind, because the wealth represents people’s trust in him. Ma is Asia’s second-richest man, with $36.8 billion in assets, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“I never believed the money belongs to me,” Ma said. “This is the money I spend on behalf of the society.”