Producer: Hui Talk.
Author: Uncle Camel.
* Danger lurks, Ali tried his best to save it, and this time, even the CEO of Taotian Group was changed.
On December 20, Alibaba announced that Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group and chairman of Taotian Group, will also serve as CEO of Taotian Group, while Dai Shan, the former CEO of Taotian Group, will step down to help establish an asset management company. Wu Yongming's importance is further highlighted, not only in his senior positions, but also in three CEO positions: Alibaba Group, Taotian Group and Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group. Tsai Chongxin said in the all-staff letter that the adjustment is to promote the efficient strategic coordination of the group's core e-commerce business-related sectors, as well as high-intensity resource investment. Tsai Chongxin said that in the process of Taotian Group's comprehensive return to users, the Internet, and the universal **, Dai Shan has completed its mission. The asset management company under construction is a new business function after Alibaba's transformation, with the goal of optimizing the return on capital and enhancing shareholder value. Even though Dai Shan is one of Alibaba's "Eighteen Arhats", she has been the person in charge of Alibaba's core and most profitable business for two years, and has only been the CEO of Lian Taotian Group for nine months, but this time she will change it, and she chose to change it at the end of 2023, which shows how urgent Ali's personnel adjustment is and how resolute her determination to change is. "The only constant is change" is the theme of Wu Yongming's all-staff letter, and it is also the core theme of Ali today. Alibaba's 2023 is spent in frequent changes, and there have been two major personnel changes in June and September this year, and this time is the third senior management change that Ali has undergone in just a few months. The deepest reason for this change is that the advantages of ** and Tmall are being lost and overtaken by latecomers. When Dai Shan took office, it was a major move for Ali to change and save Taotian, and now the sudden change shows that the previous change was not successful, and Ali's rescue of Taotian continues. The third executive change in half a yearThis is the third executive change that has occurred in half a year at Alibaba. In June this year, Daniel Zhang stepped down as chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, and since then he has served as the chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence GroupThree months later, in September, Daniel Zhang stepped down as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, and Wu Yongming took over. In March this year, Alibaba launched the largest organizational change in the history of "1+6+N", and Dai Shan officially served as the CEO of Taotian Group. On October 20, the annual Tmall Double 11 press conference was held, and Dai Shan participated for the first time as the CEO of Taotian Group. Twenty days later, Dai Shan attended Alibaba's 11.11 party and emphasized Taotian's three major strategies in her speech: user first, ecological prosperity, and technology-driven. This is the first Double 11 since the establishment of Taotian Group, Dai Shan attaches great importance to it, and appeared on Tmall's "Old Friends Appointment". However, this is also Dai Shan's most recent public appearance, and now it seems that it is also her last public appearance as the CEO of Taotian Group. From the time he took office to the time he left office, it was only a short nine months. 
Dai Shan is Alibaba's No. 11 employee and a veteran of Alibaba's "Eighteen Arhats" trusted by Jack Ma, and served as the president of Alibaba's industrial e-commerce business group from 2017 to 2021. This business group includes Alibaba International Station, 1688, AliExpress, Taote, Digital Agriculture and other businesses. In the years she served, these B-end businesses developed far less than Taotian, but they also maintained stable double-digit growth. Since 2022, Ali has begun to pay attention to 1688 and Taote again, and have developed them into an important fortress for Ali to snipe Pinduoduo, and AliExpress is also regarded as one of the most important growth points for Ali in the future. Although these changes have occurred in the last two years, it is inseparable from Dai Shan's previous foundation for these businesses. Dai Shan also served as the president of the community e-commerce business group from March to December 2021, and showed strong ability in that famous community ** war. At the beginning of 2022, as the "Jiang Fan Peach Incident" was still fermenting, Dai Shan took over as the president of Alibaba's domestic digital business sector, and Taotian's business is the most important business in the sector, and Dai Shan has become the person in charge of Alibaba's most core business and most profitable business. At that time, Dai Shan's domestic digital business sector, in addition to Taotian's core business, also included Juhuasuan, Shopping, Xianyu, 1688, Taote, Taocaicai, etc., which accounted for more than 70% of Alibaba's total revenue, but in the fourth quarter of 2021, the growth rate has dropped to 7%. Today, two years later, Dai Shan stepped down, which to a certain extent indicates that Ali's change is not a success, and Dai Shan's performance may not meet expectations. Some industry insiders said that with Dai Shan's ability, she is not enough to hold such an important position as Ali;Some people also believe that Dai Shan's business ability is good, but when she caught up with Ali's most complicated external environment, her luck was not good, and it was difficult to get good results. Of course, this change may also be more due to the change in Alibaba's entire strategy. Judging from Tsai Chongxin's internal letter, Ali will no longer diversify as before, but will return to its roots, and in the future, it will gather resources and manpower in core businesses such as e-commerce and cloud. Tsai Chongxin said that Wu Yongming took over as CEO of Alibaba Group for three months, clarified the strategic focus and priority selection of the whole group, made resolute choices around the main business, and comprehensively promoted the reform of the younger management team. In Tsai's view, Wu Yongming is also the No. 1 position of Alibaba Cloud and Taotian, which will help lead Taotian's transformation with technological innovation, and help ensure the group's unified command and high-intensity continuous investment in the two strategic focuses of e-commerce and cloud. In November, at Alibaba's quarterly performance meeting, Wu Yongming disclosed the new strategic plan to the outside world for the first time, clarifying Alibaba's important priorities for the next ten years into three directions: technology-driven Internet platform business, AI-driven technology business, and global business network. Wu Yongming said that for the core business, Alibaba Group will maintain long-term focus and high-intensity resources and R&D investment, and at the same time, each business is based on independent business units and independently oriented to the market. **Tmall is in crisisAli's previous changes were more for their own development and a race against their past, but today's changes are because of competition and competition with opponents. **Tmall, which is Ali's basic disk, is now under unprecedented pressure. In the past Q3, Taotian Group's revenue was 976500 million, a slight increase of 4% year-on-year, of which the revenue from China's retail business was 925600 million yuan, a slight increase of 3% year-on-year. Compared with the same period, Pinduoduo's revenue was 688400 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 939%。Within the group, Taotian's revenue in the quarter accounted for 43 percent of the total group4%, compared with 49% in the second quarter, and the revenue growth rate in this quarter was less than half of the group. As Alibaba's core business, Taotian's growth trend has weakened. 
As a pioneer in the e-commerce market, Tmall has not only lost its former low-price advantage and sinking market, but also established a mind in the hearts of users for many years, but also continues to disintegrate because the low-price advantage is no longer and the consumer experience is not good. Now, with the rise of short ** platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, live e-commerce is becoming more and more popular, and Pinduoduo has snatched users away with low-price advantages and simple and straightforward "tens of billions of subsidies", and the original pattern of the e-commerce market has changed. **And Tmall's market is suffering a direct impact,Now,Users have more and more channels to shop online,There are more and more ways,There are fewer people using Tmall than before. An online survey on the choice of online shopping apps shows that whether it is the post-80s, post-90s, post-95s and post-00s, the proportion of people who choose Pinduoduo is greater than **, followed by Douyin, JD.com and Xiaohongshu. For the reason for choosing, 70% of people think that it is, followed by quality, and then app experience and logistics, after-sales, but Tmall has no advantages in terms of quality, quality and logistics. In the domestic e-commerce industry, Tmall once stood alone in the martial arts and was a well-deserved king, but now, the latecomers continue to attack, the basic market has been greatly impacted, and Ali's anxiety and worry are increasing day by day. And in the last two months of this year, Ali's anxiety and worry suddenly intensified. On November 28, Pinduoduo released an amazing third-quarter report, achieving revenue of 688400 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 94%, far exceeding market expectations, which made Ali impressed and deeply in crisis. On the day the earnings report was released, Pinduoduo's share price soared, and the next day, its market value surpassed Alibaba's, allowing everyone to witness the historical moment of the transformation of e-commerce in the capital market. Even Ma Yun, who had not appeared in the public eye for a long time, couldn't sit still, and unexpectedly replied to employees on Ali's intranet, facing the reality and encouraging Ali to continue to change. Jack Ma emphasized the significance of change, and said, "No one has been a cow, but the people who can reform for the sake of tomorrow and tomorrow, and are willing to pay any price and sacrifice, are respectable." Time is running out for AliThis personnel change happened 20 days after Jack Ma's message, which shows that Ali's change is accelerating. Tsai Chongxin also expressed Jack Ma's reform argument in the letter, "A new era requires a new strategy and organizational system change. Face up to the past, face the future, change yourself, and believe that Alibaba will complete its transformation after this round of change." In May this year, Ma Yun convened the business leaders of Taotian Group, including Dai Shan, to hold a small-scale communication meeting. Ma Yun said frankly that Taotian Group is facing a very serious situation, and he believes that now that the general environment has changed, Ali's past success may not be applicable, and it should be changed quickly. Taking Kodak and Nokia as examples, Jack Ma believes that it only takes half a year to a year for a company to go from industry benchmark to death, while in the Internet industry, this speed may be even faster. He pointed out three directions for Taotian Group: return to the world, return to users, and return to the Internet. Based on this logic, Ali has adjusted a new strategy, **Tmall takes "user first" and adheres to the strategy of consumption grading and **force;Alibaba Cloud will adhere to the principle of "AI-driven, public cloud first", and develop with AI + cloud computingAt the same time, the first batch of strategic innovation-level businesses such as 1688, Xianyu, DingTalk, and Quark were also officially announced. Ali recently announced its financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, with revenue of 2247900 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%;Net income attributable to common shareholders was 2770.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year turnaround. On the whole, it is considered to have stabilized the basic market.
In the view of the new CEO Wu Yongming, no matter how successful the business model was in the past, it is necessary to turn the page to zero and awaken the mentality of starting a new business. Subsequently, he announced two major changes in the business: the suspension of the IPO of Hema Fresh and the complete spin-off of the Cloud Intelligence Group.
In addition, the first batch of strategic innovation businesses such as 1688, Xianyu, DingTalk and Quark have also surfaced. Alibaba said that these innovative businesses will be operated as independent subsidiaries in the future, and the business will break the previous positioning restrictions within the group, and Alibaba will continue to invest in a cycle of 3-5 years.
But this is extremely difficult, especially in 2023, which is more difficult and the time is more urgent.
If in 2022, in the face of opponents such as Pinduoduo and Douyin e-commerce, Ali still has time to make adjustments at the business level, then in 2023, with consumers being unprecedentedly sensitive to "low prices", Ali urgently needs to have a thorough bone scraping and poison treatment, and a reform that breaks the kettle. There really isn't much time left for Ali.