HANGZHOU, Nov. 15 -- China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group launched its Hong Kong public retail offering of 500 million new ordinary shares on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Friday, the company said.

The overall offering initially comprises 12.5 million new shares under the public retail offering and 487.5 million shares for subscription globally.

The total number of shares available under the public retail offering could be adjusted to up to a maximum of 50 million new shares, representing 10 percent of total shares initially available under the overall offering.

The company also expects to grant the international underwriters an over-allotment option to purchase up to 75 million additional new shares.

The offer price for the public retail offering will be no more than 188 HK dollars (24 U.S. dollars) per share. Alibaba will set the international offer price by Nov. 20.

The proceeds from the offering will be used for the implementation of the company's strategies of driving user growth and engagement, empowering businesses to facilitate digital transformation and continuing long-term innovation and investments.

"We aim to serve global consumers, of which more than 1 billion will be Chinese consumers and facilitate more than 10 trillion yuan (about 1.43 trillion U.S. dollars) of consumption on our platform within the next five years by continuing to pursue our three strategic pillars of globalization, domestic consumption and big data powered by cloud computing," said Daniel Zhang, CEO of Alibaba.

"Hong Kong is one of the world's most important financial centers, and we are grateful for the opportunity to participate in the future of Hong Kong," he added.