Jack Ma stood down as Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group at his farewell 55th birthday party in September this year, is a celebration complete with rock costumes and Chinese pop music in the 80,000-capacity Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre. Now, minds are turning to his successor – the softly spoken Daniel Zhang.
The 47-year-old has been Alibaba CEO since May 2015 and a director since the year prior. Zhang takes charge of a US$447 billion enterprise whose rise mirrors that of China as the world’s second-largest economy.
When Alibaba was founded in 1999 in Ma’s Hangzhou apartment, China had a basic retail infrastructure, just 8.8 million internet users and a per capita income of less than US$800. Now the country has 800 million internet users and total e-commerce turnover alone of more than US$1 trillion.
China represents around 55 per cent of the global eCommerce market, a share nearly twice that of the next top five countries combined, according to research firm eMarketer.
Alibaba says that about 40 million people were directly and indirectly employed by Alibaba’s eCommerce ecosystem in China. Although, with the Chinese economy suffering on all fronts, Zhang will need to be street smart to keep Alibaba soaring. Revenue was up 42 per cent in the first quarter of 2019 to US$16.7 million – a fall from the massive growth of previous quarters, but a revenue figure that left most retailers worldwide green with envy.
It might not be known outside China, but Alibaba has an online payment system that is among the leading payment choices for people around the world. The Group also has a messaging service called Aliwangwang, which is now the second-largest instant messaging app in China.
Zhang says Alibaba’s goal is to service more than one billion customers globally and handle over CNY10 trillion (US$1.4 trillion) in transactions in the next five years.
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