In order to woo small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in the Indian market, the world’s biggest business to business (B2B) e-commerce portal Alibaba.com has signed up a strategic partnership with Infomedia, India's largest yellow pages and special interest publishing company.

The partnership will help Alibaba.com to officially launch its services in India.

Alibaba.com already has over 4,00,000 Indian members in its list, who are mainly trading in textiles, chemicals and auto parts.

Alibaba and Infomedia affiliation will blend the power of traditional print publishing with online media and e-commerce to provide Indian SMEs with a one-stop solution for worldwide and domestic trade.

India has over eight million SMEs that make up around 40% of the country’s industrial output. SMEs employ around 30 million people.

According to industry figures three million SMEs are engaged in B2B trade and about a million are in the export business.

With this partnership, alibaba.com aims to double up its Indian membership base in the coming time.

Last year, Alibaba.com launched a special India Channel late to aid Indian suppliers find local and global buyers for their products and services. The India Channel has been well received by members, with more than 20,000 Indian companies signing up each month since January 2008.