One year after Alibaba launched a 1+6+N organizational change in March last year, Alibaba once again embraces change.
The reporter learned that Yu Yongfu, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Local Life Group, will step down from his management position and officially hand over the baton after the end of Alibaba's fiscal year on March 31.
In fact, after Yu Yongfu took charge of Alibaba's local living sector, the overall operating situation has been improving. This quarter's financial report also shows that, against the backdrop of continuous improvement in business scale and operational efficiency, Ele.me's losses have continued to narrow significantly year-on-year.
In the future, Yu Yongfu will continue to support Alibaba Group's internationalization exploration as a partner. The two major businesses of Gaode and Ele.me of the local lifestyle group will be taken over by a young management team.
The resignation of Yu Yongfu also reflects Ali's attack.
Yu Yongfu resigns as Chairman of Alibaba Local Life Group
The reporter learned that after the relevant adjustments take effect, Ele.me and Gaode will respectively establish a chairman and CEO. Among them, Wu Zeming (Fan Yu) from 1982 will serve as the chairman of Ele.me, and Han Liu (Haochen) from 1988 will serve as the CEO of Ele.me; Liu Zhenfei, former President of Gaode, serves as Chairman of Gaode, while Guo Ning serves as CEO of Gaode. Alibaba has confirmed this news.
A person close to Alibaba told Caixin reporters that Alibaba highly praised and thanked Yu Yongfu internally, stating that Yongfu has served as the number one position in multiple business sectors, making important contributions to the innovation and development of a number of businesses such as Gaode and Ele.me, and laying a solid foundation for team growth. "Yu Yongfu also expressed his pride to all local residents internally that he is from Alibaba."
Yu Yongfu, born in 1976, has gone through Lenovo and UC. During the UC period, he helped the valuation of UC achieve a growth of 2000 times over eight years.
In June 2014, after UC was acquired by Alibaba for $4.35 billion, Yu Yongfu joined Alibaba. At the same time, Alibaba established the Alibaba Mobile Business Group, with Yu Yongfu serving as the President of the Business Group. He was also appointed as the President of Alibaba Mama and joined the Alibaba Group's Strategic Decision Committee.
The following year, Yu Yongfu became a partner of Alibaba, breaking the tradition of having to serve at Alibaba for more than 5 years to become a partner.
From 2016 to 2017, Yu Yongfu served as the Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Entertainment Group, responsible for the business integration and strategic formulation of the entertainment sector. His business includes network video, information flow, games, literature, movies, music, digital entertainment, and more.
Meanwhile, Yu Yongfu also served as the President of Alibaba Mama, a digital marketing platform under Alibaba Group, from 2015 to 2016, responsible for rectifying Alibaba Mama's business direction and achieving rapid business growth.
On November 15, 2017, Alibaba made a new internal personnel appointment, and Alibaba Group will establish an eWTP investment working group, led by Yu Yongfu, who has stepped down from the entertainment business, and will continue to serve as Chairman of Gaode.
On May 23, 2018, Alibaba announced the establishment of eWTP Ecological Fund in Hong Kong, with Yu Yongfu serving as the founding partner and chairman of the fund.
Although Yu Yongfu has undergone internal changes, he has also taken orders in times of crisis.
In July 2021, Alibaba announced the upgrade of its local lifestyle business group to a lifestyle service sector. In addition to its existing businesses such as Ele.me and word-of-mouth, Gaode and Feizhu were also included in this business group. One month later, Yu Yongfu took over as the CEO of the local lifestyle company, replacing Li Yonghe who resigned. He also served as the President of the restructured local retail business group.
In March 2023, Alibaba Group launched a new round of corporate governance reform, which will establish six major business groups and multiple business companies, including the Local Life Group, with Yu Yongfu serving as the CEO of the Local Life Group.
Under the leadership of Yu Yongfu, Ele.me has embarked on the path of reducing losses and improving basic capabilities. Since the second quarter of 2022 when Ele.me achieved its first positive change in unit economic efficiency from negative, this trend has been maintained.
Management team "youthfulness"
In December last year, Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group and Chairman of Taotian Group, announced the rejuvenation of Taotian Group's management team through a letter from all employees. Six young managers, including Wu Jia, Chuduan, Jialuo, Yiman, Shaoyou, and Daofang, were appointed to lead Taotian Group's key businesses separately and report directly to Wu Yongming.
In this change of executives in multiple companies under its umbrella, there are two newly named young managers, namely Liu Bo (flower name: Jialuo) and Chen Weiye (flower name: Chuduan).
Recently, several companies under Alibaba have undergone business changes.
Among them, Wang Hai stepped down as the legal representative, chairman, and manager of Zhejiang Tmall Technology Co., Ltd., with Jiang Fang serving as the legal representative, executive director, and general manager; Liu Peng stepped down as the legal representative, chairman, and general manager of Zhejiang Tmall Network Co., Ltd., with Liu Bo serving as the legal representative, executive director, and general manager; Wang Mingqiang stepped down as the legal representative, chairman, and general manager of Zhejiang Taobao Network Co., Ltd., with Chen Weiye serving as the legal representative, executive director, and general manager; Wang Hai resigned as the legal representative, executive director, and general manager of Hangzhou Alibaba Advertising Co., Ltd., and was succeeded by Yu Yong.
The transformation of Taotian Group can be seen as the beginning of the rejuvenation process of Alibaba's management team.
Currently, two of Yu Yongfu's successors are born in the 1980s.
Wu Zeming is one of the post-80s partners who grew up from a frontline technical position at Alibaba. After joining Taobao in 2004, Wu Zeming not only became a core member of Alibaba's e-commerce system technology architecture construction, but also successively held positions such as President of the New Retail Technology Business Group, Chief Technology Officer of Local Life Business, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Group, and Vice President of Alibaba Damo Institute. Before this new appointment, Wu Zeming was the CTO of Alibaba Group, as well as the CTO of Taotian Group and the CTO of the local lifestyle group.
Han Liu, born in 1988, is also one of the youngest business presidents within the Alibaba Group, with over ten years of experience in logistics and supply chain management.
Han Liu served as the Senior Manager of the Warehouse and Logistics Department at JD.com in 2011. Later in 2014, he served as the Senior Manager of the Management and Supervision Department. From 2015 to 2018, Han Liu joined JD Logistics Group and served as the General Manager of the International Supply Chain Department. After joining Alibaba, Han Liu served as the General Manager of Alibaba's Shared Retail Business Unit, Local Logistics Business Unit, and Supermarket Ecology Business Unit since January 2019. Han Liu has also held various positions since August 2021, including Senior Vice President of Ele.me, Head of Real Time Retail Business, and President of Hummingbird Instant Delivery.
As for the newly appointed Chairman Liu Zhenfei and CEO Guo Ning of Gaode, although they are both born in the 1970s, they were previously the first and second positions in Gaode's business.
After joining Alibaba in May 2006, Liu Zhenfei was responsible for the advertising technology team, building the Alibaba Mama advertising system, establishing the Taobao Technology Support Department, and also serving as the Group's Chief Risk Officer. In 2017, he was appointed as the President of Gaode, leading Gaode to become a "super app" with a stable DAU of over 100 million.
Before joining Gaode, Guo Ning served as Senior Technical Director at 360, Technical Director at Alibaba, and Senior Technical Expert at Yahoo China. In 2023, Guo Ningqi served as the COO of Gaode Map, responsible for managing the app platform business and life service sections, as well as the integrated in store business reputation.
After taking office at the end of 2021, Yu Yongfu set the strategic direction of "four vertical and four horizontal" for the local living company: dividing the team's operational capabilities into "four vertical", including command and combat efficiency system, testing efficiency system, evaluation and incentive efficiency system, and learning and sedimentation efficiency system; And divide business assets into "four horizontal", including Ele.me Super APP (application), Real time Business Flow Supercomputing Platform, Real time Logistics Supercomputing Network (Hummingbird ready to configure), and Real time Logistics Supercomputing Platform.
However, after Yu Yongfu steps down, what will be the future of local life in Alibaba?
Taking Ele.me as an example, since Alibaba acquired Ele.me in 2018, this business has been in a long-term loss making state.
Recently, Alibaba released its Q3 2024 financial year results, which showed that Ele.me's losses continued to narrow significantly year-on-year, driving the adjusted EBITA (operating profit and loss) of the local lifestyle group to accelerate to RMB 2.068 billion. Compared to the same period last year, the loss continued to narrow by 30% from 2.923 billion yuan, exceeding market expectations.
At present, in addition to the old rival Meituan, Ali's local life business also faces the challenge of Tiktok. In the short term, Tiktok quickly established its market position in the local life market, and the news that "Tiktok is negotiating with Ali to buy something" was once heard from the market. Despite repeated denials by both parties, with Tiktok's recent attempt to infiltrate the "hourly delivery" service into instant retail, these signs indicate that the competition for the next local life track will become increasingly fierce.
Will the new management team take over as "Xiao Gui Cao Sui" or will they be more proactive in attacking?