E-commerce giant Alibaba.com said yesterday that it would buy a business management software division of Alisoft, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba Group, for 208 million yuan in an effort to increase its appeal among customers during the ongoing downturn.

China's largest business-to-business (B2B) platform said it reached an agreement with its holding company Alibaba Group to purchase the unit's assets.

The assets, whose combined book value was about 43.79 million yuan as of last month according to Alibaba.com, include major application software product lines for small businesses. All of the related customer contracts and employees of the division will be transferred to Alibaba.com, the company said.