Chinese online retail giant Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. said its public cloud computing business hit 1 million paying customers for the first time and revenues nearly doubled from last year.

Cloud revenue jumped 96 percent, to 2.43 billion yuan ($359 million), in its first quarter as the company said today it welcomed aboard 137,000 new customers. These additions not only fueled the business’ overall growth, but it also helped generate an improved revenue mix for the company from value-added services, which led to higher average revenue per user.

Some of Alibaba’s biggest cloud customers include large Chinese corporations such as CITIC Group, China Huaneng Group and PICC Finance.

Alibaba said it would continue focusing on expanding its cloud business. In the past year, the company has been quite aggressive in its pursuit of growth, adding new data centers in the U.S., Middle East and Asia. This year it announced plans to add new data centers in India, Indonesia and Malaysia, which will expand its global footprint to 14 countries. It’s also said to be in the hunt for acquisitions to boost its cloud business, targeting ZTE Corp.’s software business among others.  In addition, the company has been pushing new products, such as Cloud Storage Gateway and Lightning Cube, that are designed to help companies migrate large amounts of data to its cloud.

Alibaba also saw rapid growth in its primary e-commerce business. In its retail unit, revenue shot up 58 percent, to 43.03 billion yuan ($6.35 billion). Revenue from the digital media and entertainment business rose 30 percent. In total, the organization saw revenue top 50.184 billion yuan. Profit rose to 14.03 billion yuan.

The company has been just as aggressive in its efforts to grow its e-commerce business. Earlier this year it said it would acquire Singapore-based Internet retailer Lazada Group, which has a strong presence in Southeast Asia. In addition, Alibaba is said to be targeting new e-commerce acquisitions in the U.S. and Russia as part of a wider international expansion drive.

Image: Alibaba