Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Alibaba Group Holding who remains the spiritual leader of the tech giant despite keeping a distance from day-to-day business, has written a rare internal memo, encouraging staff to embrace change and stick to the company’s original vision.
“I believe that everyone at Alibaba today is watching and listening,” Ma wrote. “I firmly believe that Alibaba will change and adapt. All great companies are born in winter.”
“I have to congratulate PDD for their decisions, execution and efforts in the past few years,” he continued. “Everyone can be successful at some point, but only those who can change for the future and are willing to pay any price [to reach that goal] can be respected. Let’s go back to our mission and vision. Keep it up, Alibaba people!”
The memo comes as the market value of PDD has surged to US$185 billion, just slightly below Alibaba’s US$195 billion, after its US-listed American depositary shares gained 18 per cent at market close on Tuesday.
The strong performance of PDD has triggered some soul-searching among Alibaba employees on the company’s internal discussion board, drawing the response from Ma, who no longer holds any official positions at Alibaba and signed the memo under the title “Alibaba partner”.
Founded in 2015 – some 16 years after Alibaba was established – PDD has quickly become one of the biggest e-commerce players in China and set its sights on the international market. It launched Temu in September last year, competing against the likes of Beijing-based ByteDance’s TikTok Shop and Alibaba’s global business.
How Shein and Temu are changing the face of China’s vast export machine
How Shein and Temu are changing the face of China’s vast export machine
PDD has attributed the company’s soaring growth to improving consumer sentiment resulting from its efforts to “carry out a high-quality development strategy”.
“As one of the largest e-commerce platforms in China, we clearly felt a continuous recovery of the economy, as well as the potential and resilience of a consumption market,” Chen Lei, chairman and co-CEO of PDD, said in a conference call with analysts on Tuesday.
