On November 19th, Caizhongshe published an article titled "Jiang Fan's' Redemption '", pointing out that Jiang Fan successfully led Alibaba International Digital Business Group (hereinafter referred to as "Alibaba International") under Alibaba (BABA/09988.HK, hereinafter referred to as "Alibaba") to surpass Cloud Intelligence Group and become the "second largest" in revenue among Alibaba's various business groups in about two years. He predicted that Jiang Fan, the most capable of fighting in the second generation after Ali's "Eighteen Arhat" created a new generation, would come back "killed". As expected, the latest news today shows that Jiang Fan has reached a higher level and has been entrusted with important responsibilities.
According to an exclusive report by LatePost, on the evening of the 21st, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming released a staff email announcing the establishment of an e-commerce business group to integrate domestic and foreign e-commerce businesses, including Taotian Group, Alibaba International, and two strategic innovative businesses, 1688 and Xianyu.
Jiang Fan serves as the CEO of the e-commerce business group and reports to Wu Yongming.
In 2019, as Alibaba's new competitor was about to surpass one trillion GMV, an entrepreneur commented that the next few years of e-commerce would depend on whether Jiang Fan could win over another smart person. After five years of twists and turns, the most important battle in China's e-commerce industry has once again fallen into the hands of Jiang Fan.
In the email, Wu Yongming pointed out that e-commerce has entered a new era, and Alibaba needs to enhance its global supply chain and consumer service capabilities. Artificial intelligence (AI) remains his focus, and the group needs to grasp the productivity revolution centered on AI. The Taobao Group and Alibaba International Digital Business Group, which were originally independent subsidiaries, will belong to the newly established e-commerce business group, which is under the Alibaba Group and is not an independent company with its own board of directors.
The leadership position set up by Alibaba for this business group is not president, but "CEO", which means that Jiang Fan will have greater management power.
In January 2022, Jiang Fan officially stepped down as the CEO of Taobao, Tmall, and Alibaba Mama, and took charge of the overseas digital business sector. At that time, Alibaba's domestic e-commerce business had not yet been fully integrated, and Taobao and Tmall each had complete teams responsible for attracting and operating each product category.
The vast majority of Alibaba's revenue comes from Taobao and Tmall, but at that time, the e-commerce business still needed to continue supporting the group's other businesses - Cainiao, Da Culture and Entertainment, and Ele.me - with a total loss of 31.6 billion yuan in 2022. Taobao and Tmall not only require financial support, but also need to leverage their annual transaction volume of over 7 trillion yuan to support Alibaba's incubated payment and logistics system, refusing to use infrastructure established by competitors.
The domestic e-commerce part that Jiang Fan took over this time, although the main products are still Taobao and Tmall, the team has gone through multiple rounds of integration, and the focus has shifted from the brand's Tmall to the affordable Taobao. In the past three months of massive interconnectivity, Taobao has successively integrated WeChat Pay and JD Logistics, and started to advertise on WeChat for Double 11, supporting all choices. Essentially, it is doing subtraction, helping core e-commerce to decouple from other businesses, and having the opportunity to seek the widest and most suitable partners for itself. Alibaba Group's other businesses have also begun to independently take responsibility for profits and losses. E-commerce related resources have been reinvested into Taobao and Tmall, and executives from multiple groups have also been transferred to Taotian Group.
More than two years later, the burden faced by Alibaba's e-commerce business leaders has been significantly reduced, and they now have traffic sources and logistics infrastructure that are completely equivalent to those of competitors such as Pinduoduo.
In Alibaba's external narrative, Taobao has won both the "618" and "Double 11" major promotions this year. During the 618 shopping festival, Alibaba stabilized its domestic e-commerce market share and achieved double-digit growth in GMV, which has not been seen in many years. A former Alibaba high P stated that the GMV growth rate during the extended period of the "Double 11" shopping festival also reached double digits. Alibaba executives summarized it as "strong growth" during the earnings conference call. However, from the perspective of employees, old problems such as high information barriers, business conflicts, and favoritism still exist.
After a year of continuous subtraction, Wu Yongming helped the new e-commerce business group unload its burden and create new competitive conditions.
Managing overseas business for nearly three years, Jiang Fan's growth
LatePost later stated that choosing Jiang Fan was a decision made by Wu Yongming and the founder of Alibaba after their recent initiative.
Jiang Fan is currently the most suitable executive for Alibaba to take over the new e-commerce business group. He is the youngest partner of Alibaba and has been responsible for expanding Alibaba's e-commerce business both domestically and overseas. In the evaluations of the employees, Jiang Fan is smart, knowledgeable about the product, and straightforward.
Some birds are destined not to be caged because they always have the courage, methods, and even luck to break through difficulties.
To some extent, Jiang Fan is the "bird" of Alibaba.
The recently released second quarter financial report of Alibaba for the fiscal year 2025 (ending on September 30, 2024) shows that Alibaba International, led by Jiang Fan, had a revenue of 31.672 billion yuan in the quarter, second only to Taotian Group's 99 billion yuan, slightly higher than Cloud Intelligence Group's 29.6 billion yuan and Cainiao Group's 24.6 billion yuan.
Unlike the small difference in revenue, in terms of year-on-year growth rate, Alibaba International surged by 29% in Q2 of the 2025 fiscal year; Taotian Group saw a year-on-year growth of 1%, but struggled to maintain it; Cainiao and Cloud Intelligence account for 8% and 7% respectively, striving to "climb the slope".
Even though Alibaba wants to cover up for Jiang Fan, Jiang Fan's "standing tall" is still evident.
Since the personnel earthquake at Alibaba in December 2021, Jiang Fan has been out of the spotlight for three years, having been transferred from the former head of Tmall and Taobao to overseas business (i.e. Alibaba International).
Within three years, as a reference, Alibaba International's revenue for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 was 24.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 53% compared to the same period in fiscal year 2023, which was 16 billion yuan; Cloud Intelligence Group's 27.6 billion yuan saw a slight increase of 2% year-on-year.
It is not difficult to find that Jiang Fan successfully led Alibaba International to surpass the Cloud Intelligence Group and become the "second largest" in revenue among Alibaba's various business groups in about two years. Jiang Fan, the best fighter among the second generation after the creation of Ali's "Eighteen Arhat", came back.
Alibaba's former high-ranking executive, who declined to be named, revealed that due to age differences, among Alibaba's current partners, Jiang Fan and Xingdian (Alibaba's nickname, currently the president of Alibaba Damo Academy) have outstanding business abilities and are most recognized by Alibaba founder Jack Ma and other "veterans". Although Jiang Fan has been with Alibaba for many years, his values still need to be modeled after Alibaba; Xingdian is characterized by a strong personality, to the point where even "Teacher Ma" is often criticized.
According to Baidu Baike, Jiang Fan, born in 1985, graduated from the Department of Computer Science at Fudan University and worked at Google China, participating in the research and development of Google Maps, search quality, and content advertising. In April 2010, Jiang Fan founded the mobile developer service platform - Youmeng, which received a $10 million Series A financing from Li Kaifu Angel Investment and Jingwei Leading Investment, with a valuation of $50 million.
In 2013, Alibaba acquired Youmeng for $80 million, and Jiang Fan joined Alibaba. Starting from 2014, Jiang Fan began to promote the functional research and development of the mobile Taobao App (hereinafter referred to as "Hand Taobao"), leading the team to construct the Taobao content system, realizing and creating a "consumer media platform" that integrates products, transactions, sharing, interaction, videos, and live streaming.
In 2014, under the promotion of Jiang Fan, the daily active users of Taobao increased from 30 million to 60 million, and Jiang Fan also became famous in the Alibaba battle; In the following year of 2015, the scale of hand picked daily activities surged again to 110 million with a growth rate of nearly 100%. Jiang Fan also became the President of Taobao in 2017 and concurrently served as the President of Tmall in March 2019.
Among the executives who have joined Alibaba for so many years due to mergers and acquisitions, Jiang Fan has developed the best. He has been in charge of Alibaba's core Taobao business for 6 years, and Jiang Fan deserves to be the successor team that Mr. Ma (Jack Ma) and Xiaoyaozi (Alibaba Huaming, former Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong) are interested in cultivating.
Jiang Fan's redemption after scandal accident
In April 2020, Jiang Fan's wife Dong Huahua publicly named internet celebrity Zhang Dayi on Weibo: "This is the first and last warning you. If you provoke my husband again, I won't be polite, and I'm not easy to mess with. Please respect yourself and take care of yourself
The scandal between Jiang Fan and Zhang Dayi has surfaced.
In the same month, Alibaba made a ruling that Jiang Fan's Alibaba partner status was revoked, he was given a demerit, his rank was downgraded from M7 (Senior Vice President of the Group) to M6 (Vice President of the Group), and all rewards from the previous fiscal year were cancelled.
According to insiders, the Alibaba founding team led by Jack Ma places special emphasis on values and corporate culture. In September 2016, the Alibaba "Mooncake Gate" incident went viral. During Alibaba's internal Mid Autumn Festival mooncake grabbing activity, four programmers were fired for using scripts to flash an additional 124 boxes of mooncakes. Alibaba's emphasis on corporate culture is evident.
The nature of the Jiang Fan Zhang Dayi scandal is far superior to the "Mooncake Gate" in the eyes of the outside world.
As an internet celebrity and co-founder of Ruhan Holdings, Zhang Dayi is considered by the industry to have borrowed traffic support from platforms such as Taobao Live. As the president of Taobao and Tmall at that time, Jiang Fan was the decision-maker of Taobao related traffic.
Alibaba's final response stated that on the one hand, Jiang Fan did not engage in any transfer of benefits to the business activities of all Taobao and Tmall stores owned by Ruhan and Zhang Dayi, and the scandal was only Jiang Fan's personal issue; On the other hand, the public opinion crisis caused by the incident had a significant impact on Alibaba, and Jiang Fan needs to be held responsible for it.
Jiang Fan began to 'hide in the deep chambers' from this point on. Until the evening of July 21, 2023, Alibaba released its financial report for the 2023 fiscal year, which showed that Jiang Fan reappeared on Alibaba's partner list.
Why does Alibaba attach so much importance to Jiang Fan, so much so that it is like Jack Ma, who once abandoned the "father of Taobao" Sun Tongyu, but "punished him severely and warned him little" and allowed him to "attack monsters and upgrade" his overseas business?
In 2019, Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan (03690), who has always been regarded by the industry as having a broad perspective and a keen eye for the big picture, predicted that the competition between Jiang Fan and Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinduoduo (PDD), in the coming years should be very exciting.
In Wang Xing's view, the two 80s generation players, Jiang Fan and Huang Zheng, who created the "third pole" of e-commerce, are rivals at the same level, but they respectively run different e-commerce camps. Jiang Fan needs innovation, but more importantly, he is helping Alibaba defend the city; Huang Zheng is the main attacker, but he cannot ignore the possibility of a latecomer appearing behind him at any time.
The script of fate is always more exciting than predetermined.
When Jiang Fan was "leveling up" at Alibaba International, on November 29, 2023, Pinduoduo, which had previously focused on "outside the Fifth Ring Road" and implemented the strategy of surrounding cities from rural areas, surpassed Alibaba for the first time in terms of market value. An Alibaba employee posted on the company's intranet that they are "unable to sleep at this moment".
Jack Ma quickly responded to the discussion as a partner of Alibaba, stating, "I firmly believe that Alibaba will change, Alibaba will change, and all great companies are born in winter. The era of AI e-commerce has just begun, and it is both an opportunity and a challenge for everyone
Prior to this, Alibaba, with its keen sense of smell, had already made two rounds of adjustments in the face of Pinduoduo's fierce attack on social media.
In March 2023, Zhang Yong, who was then the "leader" of Alibaba Group, initiated the "most important organizational change" for Alibaba, breaking it down into a "1+6+N" structure. The so-called "1+6+N" refers to one Alibaba listed company entity, six business groups, and multiple independent business companies, while the six business groups refer to Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, Taobao Tmall Business, Local Life, Cainiao, International Digital Business, Big Entertainment, etc.
The other round occurred less than 3 months after the adjustment of "1+6+N". On June 20, 2023, Zhang Yong announced that he will step down as Chairman and CEO of the Group on September 10, and will be replaced by Executive Vice Chairman of the Group, Joseph Tsai, as Chairman of the Group's Board of Directors, and Wu Yongming as CEO of Alibaba Holding Group.
In fact, whether Cai Chongxin or Wu Yongming, as members of the "Eighteen Arhat" of Ma Yun's entrepreneurship, they are probably just "transitional candidates" of Ali's post Ma Yun era. Due to various reasons, after Jack Ma's retirement, Xiaoyaozi was unable to effectively target the rise of Pinduoduo, let alone TikTok, SHEIN, and Temu's conquests in overseas e-commerce; The core of Cai Chongxin's leadership and Wu Yongming's "team building" is to buy time and space for the rise of Alibaba's second-generation partners such as Jiang Fan.
Surprisingly, during Jiang Fan's years of overseas redemption at Alibaba, Huang Zheng had even retired from Pinduoduo.
An easily overlooked news outside of Alibaba's financial report is that on November 4th, Alibaba launched a new cross-border e-commerce application "TAO" in the Japanese market. The platform has listed over 3 million products, covering multiple categories such as clothing accessories, indoor furniture, outdoor camping, pet supplies, cooking utensils, and office supplies. The company plans to further expand the quantity and categories of products in the future to meet market demand.
TAO supports various payment methods such as credit cards, debit cards, PayPay, convenience store payments, and Pay easy. It also collaborates with large domestic transportation companies in Japan to provide free returns within 40 days. In addition, the platform also provides a Japanese customer service team that supports various service methods such as online chat, phone, and email to enhance the user experience.
Jiang Fan seems to be launching a "encirclement" campaign against Pinduoduo's overseas version of Temu, using Pinduoduo's "rural encirclement of cities" strategy from the past.
There can only be one super giant in the e-commerce market: Alibaba will either leave Pinduoduo or be left behind by Pinduoduo. There is no other possibility. Jiang Fan is now taking over the most important battle for Alibaba.