Yu Yongfu has also stepped down.
Recently, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming sent an internal letter announcing that Yu Yongfu will step down from his management positions in the two major businesses of Ele.me and Gaode.
As a result, Yu Yongfu, who has been with Alibaba for ten years, officially left the front line. According to the news, after stepping down, Yu Yongfu will build on the eWTP fund and provide strategic support for Alibaba's business while exploring more internationalization.
From "Investors" to "Integration Masters"
The resignation of 48 year old Yu Yongfu may seem sudden, but it is actually reasonable. In the past 10 years of Alibaba, Yu Yongfu has taken over multiple businesses, including Gaode, Alibaba Mama, Da Wen Yu, eWTP Technology Ecological Fund, etc., with a large span.
Yu Yongfu was born in 1976, in Inner Mongolia, and grew up in Tianjin. In 1999, after graduating from the World Business School of Nankai University in Tianjin, he ventured south to Shenzhen and later joined a securities company.
In 2001, Yu Yongfu entered Lenovo to do venture capital business, responsible for telecommunications, new media, Internet, mobile Internet and other fields. During his time at Lenovo, Yu Yongfu went on a business trip for 20 days a month and spent 5 years reviewing 500 projects. His expertise lies in negotiating the distribution of benefits with companies and governments.
As a result, Yu Yongfu joined Lenovo only three years ago and became the youngest vice president of Lenovo. Yu Yongfu said, it's like drinking 500 bottles of entrepreneurial concentrate.
But Yu Yongfu is not satisfied with this. In 2006, while doing venture capital business, Yu Yongfu, who met UC founders Liang Jie and He Xiaopeng, formed UC together with them by chance and embarked on the path of entrepreneurship.
After 8 years of entrepreneurship, Yu Yongfu has transformed UC from a traditional operating company to a mobile browser company by divesting non central affairs and focusing on mobile browsers. UC, which has stepped onto the dividends of the times, has also made great strides, with its valuation increasing by 2000 times!
The success of UC has attracted Alibaba's attention. In that year, the giant offered a record $4.35 billion in Internet buying, which was the highest in history, and won UC. Yu Yongfu also joined the Alibaba Mobile work group as a result, became the president, and participated in the Alibaba Group Strategic Resolution Planning Committee.
It is worth mentioning that Yu Yongfu only took a year and a half from joining Alibaba to becoming a partner. During this period, Yu Yongfu faced another test.
After being acquired by Alibaba, UC immediately acquired Gaode, and Yu Yongfu became the President of Gaode. At the same time, Gaode signed a gambling agreement with Alibaba Group, which includes "Gaode achieving 200 million daily active users within three years" and so on.
In this bet, Yu Yongfu led Gaode to establish a 100 person project team and set a performance bet. As a result, team members gave up their three-year incentive salary
It has been proven that Gaode Map has achieved impressive results with daily active users (DAU) reaching over 100 million, proving itself. The peak value of DAU once reached 280 million, surpassing Baidu Maps and becoming the industry leader; When Yu Yongfu took over, the DAU was still less than ten million.
After the successful integration of UC and Gaode, Alibaba also took the opportunity to hand over all local life business segments to Yu Yongfu. In July 2021, Yu Yongfu was appointed by the group to be in charge of the life service sector composed of Gaode, Feizhu, and local living.
Regarding the integration of multiple businesses over the past two years, the Alibaba Partner Committee in 2015 commented, "Although I have not been with Alibaba for a long time, Yu Yongfu's broad mindedness, responsibility, and dedication, as well as his advocacy of corporate culture, well reflect Alibaba's values and mission."
Next stop, eWTP Fund
In the internal letter, Wu Yongming clarified Yu Yongfu's next destination, which is to serve Alibaba through investment based on eWTP funds. This time, Yu Yongfu returned to the place where the ship first set sail.
In fact, Yu Yongfu is not unfamiliar with eWTP funds. In 2018, when Yu Yongfu withdrew from Alibaba's daily management affairs, he focused on investing in the eWTP Technology Ecological Fund, investing in overseas technology innovation and consumer upgrading.
This time, Yu Yongfu returned to the eWTP fund and, like Zhang Yong, also started as a VC.
What is eWTP Fund? According to data from Caixin Venture Capital Communication - Zhizhong, the full name of eWTP Fund is eWTP Technology Innovation Fund. The fund was established in 2018 and its cornerstone investors are Alibaba Group and others. Alibaba partner Yu Yongfu serves as the founding partner and chairman.
Before the establishment of the fund, Jack Ma had elaborated on the concept, vision, and implementation of eWTP (World Electronic Trade Platform).
Jack Ma stated that eWTP needs to do three things:
Firstly, eWTP will promote public-private dialogue to improve the business environment and cultivate future cross-border e-commerce rules in key areas, including simplifying rules and standards and collaborative taxation.
Secondly, eWTP will cooperate with international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) to enhance the demand for the development of electronic trade and improve the WTO's Trade Facilitation Agreement regulations.
Thirdly, eWTP aims to assist in the development of cross-border e-commerce, promote the digital economy through the development of e-commerce infrastructure, and adopt best practices such as establishing cross-border e-commerce pilot zones to address the prominent problems faced by small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries.
Because of this, the initial scale of eWTP fund is 600 million dollars, focusing on the global development of scientific and technological innovation and innovative enterprises related to the "the Belt and Road" initiative region. Since its establishment 6 years ago, the eWTP fund has invested in many projects in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and North Africa, sub Saharan Africa and other regions, covering e-commerce, logistics, social media, consumption and other fields, forming a fund ecosystem.
In 2020, its first regional sub fund, eWTP Arabia Capital, was established. The fund received support from sovereign funds of Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia and established a regional headquarters in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
In February 2023, Yida Capital successfully completed a fundraising of 1 billion US dollars. Among them, the eWTP fund is one of the investors, and the Saudi Sovereign Fund (PIF) is also among them. The fund mainly invests in technology startups in Asia and the Middle East to promote their globalization and listing plans.
According to data from Caixin Venture Capital, Yida Capital has made two notable investments. One is the establishment of Saudi Cloud Computing Company (SCCC) with joint investment from Saudi Telecom; The other one is Jitu Logistics.
Yu Yongfu, who has not yet completed his mission
In addition to the eWTP fund, the above internal letter also mentioned that Yu Yongfu will explore more international business for Alibaba.
As one of Alibaba's three major strategies, globalization business is mainly undertaken by Alibaba's investment entities, including Alibaba Group Investment Department, eWTP Fund, and the successful fundraising of 1 billion US dollars by Yida Capital (eWTPA).
According to data from Caixin Venture Capital Communication - Zhizhong, Alibaba's investment department has invested more than 190 overseas in the past, mainly in e-commerce and financial services, as well as social networking, and has mostly focused on equity investment.
The recent investments occurred in 2023, with Alibaba's investment department participating in Paytm and Proxtera. Among them, Paytm is an Indian mobile shopping and payment platform; Proxtera is a Singaporean fintech company.
Looking at it over time, the year with the most intensive overseas investment by Alibaba's investment department is 2021. At that time, Alibaba's investment department worked on 8 projects a year, including Kakao Pay, Klarna, EyeVerify, Dotz, etc.
Kakao Pay's Kakao Talk is the most popular instant messaging software in South Korea. The former's online payment function has won the love of many users, with over 48 million users worldwide.
Klarna was founded in Stockholm in 2005 and also focuses on online payment services. After obtaining investments from Alibaba Investment and BlackRock, the company was valued at over $10 billion and became the largest financial technology unicorn company in Europe.
The latest news shows that Klarna is considering an IPO in the United States as early as the third quarter and is seeking a valuation of nearly $20 billion.
These investments, originating from overseas operations, have become an important source of revenue for Alibaba. The latest financial report shows that overseas markets have shouldered the banner of high growth in Alibaba's e-commerce, with Alibaba International Digital Business Group's revenue increasing by 44% year-on-year and overall orders increasing by 24% year-on-year. All of its overseas retail platforms have achieved strong growth.
At Alibaba's financial report conference call on February 7th, overseas e-commerce remained highly anticipated. Its executives stated that they will continue to increase investment in core businesses such as cloud and e-commerce, including domestic and overseas e-commerce, in the future.
From this perspective, Yu Yongfu's mission at Alibaba has not yet been completed, and in the future, he will focus on Alibaba's important business through investment.