Charismatic founder, Jack Ma, hands over reins of e-com giant, Alibaba.com

11th March 2013
Charismatic founder, Jack Ma,  hands over reins of e-com giant, Alibaba.com

Hangzhao, China, March 12: Iconic founder-CEO,Jack Ma, of the  world’s largest B2B ecommerce operation, the China headquartered Alibaba.com,  has  relinquished  operational reins of the company. The new CEO is  Alibaba Group Executive Vice President Jonathan Lu Zhaoxi.  The still young Ma, 48 remains Alibaba Group executive chairman.The new CEO , who takes over May 10, has been more than a decade with the company  and has led three of Alibaba’s major divisions and steered Taobao, the group’s market-dominant online shopping platform, during a period of high growth that helped establish Internet e-commerce in the minds of millions of Chinese consumers.

The  changes  will be watched with interest in India which has more than a million registered users and is one of the fastest growing regions of Alibaba."Jonathan and I have worked together for 13 years," Ma wrote in an e-mail sent March 11, to Alibaba employees. "During that time, he founded the Alibaba.com Guangdong sales team; was the founding president of Alipay; served as president of Big Taobao; stepped in as CEO of the then-listed Alibaba.com. He is currently the Group's chief data officer and president of Aliyun Mobile OS. He is passionate about and familiar with the Group's various businesses.”
Lu, 43, has a reputation as a low-profile leader, an operations whiz with the ability to get things done.  He  holds a master's degree in business administration from China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, was named chief executive officer of Alibaba.com in early 2011, presiding over the privatization of the business-to-business trading website the following year.

Alibaba Group was founded in 1999 by 18 people led by Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China who has aspired to help make the Internet accessible, trustworthy and beneficial for everyone. The privately held Alibaba Group, including its affiliated entities, employs more than 24,000 people in some 70 cities in Greater China, India, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. 
As of December 31, 2012, theAlibaba.com  platform had around 36.7 million registered users from more than 240 countries.

Our earlier coverage of Alibaba:

Alibaba's millionth India member

 Alibaba says Open Sesame, India!

B2B leader, Alibaba with a million plus members in India, plans to... 

Alibaba pushes B2B, points Indian traders to Euro markets