By March 2023, Alibaba had lost three quarters of its value from the peak in October 2020, as the e-commerce giant, once seen as China’s answer to Amazon.com, faces questions on whether it can recapture its former glory while dealing with China’s economic slowdown, regulatory scrutiny and fierce competition from old and new rivals.
Ma, who no longer holds any management role but has become Alibaba’s largest shareholder after early investor SoftBank cashed out its stake, wrote a rare long memo to Alibaba employees this week, endorsing the changes made by Tsai and Wu and urging employees to embrace innovation.
“We made countless mistakes in the past 25 years, and we will [continue to] make mistakes in the next 77 years”, wrote Ma. “To face problems is not to deny the past, but to responsibly find the way to the future.”
In a podcast interview with Norges Bank Investment Management’s CEO Nicolai Tangen last week, Tsai also said the group has made “mistakes”.
“We have fallen behind because we forgot who our real customers are,” Tsai said. “Our customers are the users who use our