CHINESE e-commerce firm Alibaba.com Ltd will launch a project in April to subsidize small and medium companies to use its online services. From yesterday, users were invited to subscribe for a free trial on caifu.china.alibaba.com, with a quota of 6,188 people.

The project will lower the threshold for domestic firms to use the e-commerce service, said Chief Executive Officer David Wei.

Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com reported its net profit more than quadrupled to 967.8 million yuan (US$136.3 million) in 2007 from a year earlier due to rapid expansion of paying users.