M&A Due Diligence (Traceability Technologies)

Alibaba Group makes investments in technology to enhance their brand and build trust with their consumer customers. As part of those efforts novel anti-counterfeiting and brand protection technologies were of interest. Albibaba Group has significant capabilities in IP and brand protection practices, but lack expetrise and knowledge in anti-counterfeiting and consumer authentication technology feasibility and effectiveness. They realized help from an industry expert would improve their due diligence of several prospective technology targets.

Leverging nearly 20 years of anti-counterfeiting technology development and deployment experience we prioritized a list of technology companies and conducted technical feasibility and effectiveness for each against Alibaba Group objectives. We visited technology providers, evaluated their processes and strength of their intellectual property. We identified strengths and weaknesses in deployment scale-up and long term viability of the technology companies. We also evaluated the technology's ease of use and understanding by consumers and overall robustness to deter, detect and disrupt counterfeiters.

Alibaba Group combined their financial due diligence with MDB's technical feasibility and performance due diligence and proceeded with investment in one of the technology companies shortly after our work concluded. The investment has paid dividends and the technology has experienced steady growth and contributed to improvements in consumer trust.