What's next for Alibaba as founder Jack Ma steps down
Jack Ma, the founder and chairman of Alibaba Group, the world's largest e-commerce platform after Amazon, has announced that he will be stepping down from his position. However, he will retain his position as a board member.
Following the step-down, Alibaba's current CEO, Daniel Zhang will be taking over the executive chairmanship to steer the company forward.
A era comes to an end
From a poor family, Jack Ma bought his first computer at the age of 33. Almost 5 years later, without any background in computers, he established Alibaba after convincing a few friends to invest in the startup.
In the two decades since Alibaba's foundation in 1999, Alibaba has reached the valuation of $480 billion. With this step, he would now become the first prominent Chinese tech entrepreneur who will be stepping down from the company he founded.
This is probably as big as Steve Jobs stepping down from Apple.
As a new one begins
Daniel Zhang, who will be taking over the chairmanship, has a pretty fair idea of where he wants to lead Alibaba in a new age. His plans essentially build upon the current business model of Alibaba, with an added layer of services and technology.
He wants to build a New Retail concept for Alibaba, as the company showcased at the 2019 National Retail Federation Conference in New York City.
This concept is designed to become a one-stop-shop for all customers, adding more online as well as offline customers to Alibaba. This new venture, that will operate under a new brand name Freshippo, is believed to bring together small and medium sized companies with potential for global outreach.
Through this sort of 'startup' inside Alibaba that will capture the offline and online market, the Chinese giant will venture into the consumables space, such as grocery, fresh food and restaurants. They also plan to add a new layer of AI face recognition technology to the systems to speed up delivery and logistics in this new space.
Zhang believes that the e-commerce business needs a new catalyst to keep being relevant and competent in the market, as competition is becoming too much.
“If we don’t kill our existing business, someone else will. So I’d rather see our own new businesses kill our existing business.”Daniel Zhang in an interview with Bloomberg
Along with New Retail, Ma also suggested other strategies to grow the business, such as New Finance, New Technology, New Manufacturing, and New Energy. Alibaba's cloud business is also booming.
