Alibaba promotes millennials to key e-commerce leadership roles as it repositions to fend off rivals

Alibaba Group Holding is pushing millennials, typically defined as those born in the early 1980s to mid-1990s, to take key roles in the country's largest online market, as the Hangzhou-based e-commerce giant repositions itself to fend off fierce competition from rivals such as PDD Holdings.

The company's Taobao and Tmall Group has promoted six young executives to lead key departments in a sweeping reshuffle after Eddie Wu Yongming replaced Trudy Dai Shan as the CEO of the unit, according to an internal letter seen by the Post about the appointments made on Friday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The promotions come as Alibaba's bread-and-butter e-commerce business, which contributes to the bulk of its earnings, is in critical need of a revamp to win back young consumers from more budget-focused platforms.

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Wu Jia, 38, was appointed to take charge of improving user experience at Taobao and Tmall thanks to his track record running Quark, transforming it from an obscure app into a popular search and online storage tool for young Chinese netizens. The business turned out to be so promising that Eddie Wu named Quark as one of the company's four "strategic innovation businesses".

Chen Weiye, a former executive at food delivery unit Ele.me, has been appointed to run Taobao, while Liu Bo was appointed to oversee Tmall. Cheng Daofang is the new head of live-streaming e-commerce and content.

Liu Yiman, the only woman among the new appointees, will manage the merchant-to-consumer business. Wang Tingxiang, the youngest of the group at 36 years old, will lead fashion and apparel development.

Many of the appointees have a background in technology, with experience creating new products that cater to younger users. Chen, for example, was the founder of Xianyu, a popular online flea market owned by Alibaba.

Upon announcing the reshuffle, Eddie Wu encouraged the staff to "reignite their entrepreneurial spirit" in order to "secure and win their future".

A representative of the Taobao and Tmall Group said that the new management "developed fundamental skill sets and experience from the bottom up" to "create a culture of innovation that will foster our new generation of talent".

Since Wu took over as Alibaba Group CEO in September, he has called for change and reform to cope with rising competition. He told employees in a letter that month that the company would "rejuvenate the team", and that in four years, the core management would be made up of millennials.

The company, founded in 1999, has faced pressure from rapidly growing competitors like PDD, the owner of budget shopping platforms Pinduoduo in China and Temu overseas, launched in 2015 and 2022, respectively. The market cap of PDD even surpassed Alibaba last month after the former beat earnings estimates in the third quarter.

PDD's market capitalisation was still slightly above that of its rival at US$194.9 billion on Thursday, compared with Alibaba's US$194 billion in New York.

The rise of PDD even elicited a response from Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, who retired as executive chairman in 2019. He praised PDD for the "decisions, execution and efforts" that helped the upstart vault past Alibaba, according to an internal memo.

Alibaba overhauled its sprawling empire in late March with the intent of splitting its myriad businesses into six independently run entities: Cloud Intelligence Group, e-commerce under Taobao and Tmall, Cainiao's smart logistics operations, Local Services, Global Digital Business Group, and Digital Media and Entertainment Group.

The cloud spin-off was axed last month, and Wu took over as head of the unit.

The new CEO highlighted artificial intelligence and client services as the future of Alibaba. He recently took direct control of the Taobao and Tmall Group, as well, which was seen as a move to make e-commerce operations more technology-driven.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.