Chairman of Alibaba’s Local Life Group, Yu Yongfu, to Step Down from His Management Role

According to Chinese media LatePost, on March 1, Alibaba Group’s CEO, Wu Yongming, sent an internal letter to the Local Life Group, including Amap and Ele.me, announcing that the Chairman of the Local Life Group and CEO of Ele.me, Yu Yongfu, will step down from his management position in the Local Life Group at the end of Alibaba‘s current fiscal year (March 31).

Ele.me and Amap, the two major businesses of the Local Life Group, will each have their own Chairman and CEO.

Ele.me’s new Chairman will be Wu Zeming, the CTO of the Local Life Group, and the CEO will be Han Liu, the head of Fengniao Delivery. Amap’s Chairman will be President Liu Zhenfei, and the COO Guo Ning will become Amap’s CEO.

Yu Yongfu will remain a partner of Alibaba. He will focus on more international explorations through investments based on the eWTP fund, and provide more strategic support for the business.

Yu Yongfu has been with Alibaba for ten years, and has been in charge of local life for nearly three years. Wu Yongming highly praised Yu Yongfu in the letter to all employees and thanked him for his hard work and dedication over the past ten years.

The new Chairman of Ele.me, Wu Zeming, is one of Alibaba‘s post-80s partners. He joined Taobao in 2004 and is a core member of the technical architecture construction of Alibaba‘s e-commerce system. He has successively held the positions of President of New Retail Technology Business Group, Chief Technology Officer of Local Life Business, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Group, and Deputy Dean of Alibaba Damo Academy.

Before this promotion, Wu Zeming was the CTO of Alibaba Group, Taotian Group, and Local Life Group. Internally, he is considered a “technical executive grown from the front-line technical position”.

The new CEO of Ele.me, Han Liu, born in 1988, is one of Alibaba‘s post-85 presidents. After joining Alibaba, he served as the Senior Vice President of Ele.me, the head of the Instant Retail Business, and the President of Fengniao Instant Delivery. An Alibaba insider described him as having “rich business and logistics experience in far, medium, and near-field e-commerce”.

Fengniao Instant Delivery is one of Ele.me’s core assets, with more than 3 million riders. During Han Liu’s management, Fengniao has promoted the construction of a supercomputing logistics platform and established a new development and protection system for Blue Knights.

The new Chairman of Amap, Liu Zhenfei, and CEO Guo Ning, both born in the 70s, were previously the first and second in command of Amap’s business and have been managing Amap on the front line for many years.

Liu Zhenfei joined Alibaba in May 2006, initially responsible for the advertising technology team and building the Alibaba Mama advertising system. He later set up the Taobao Technology Support Department and served as the head, and was appointed as the Group’s Chief Risk Officer.

Since 2017, he has been the President of Amap, successfully leading Amap from 40 million DAU to a stable “super app” with over 100 million DAU. As of 2023, Gaode’s daily activity has risen to 150 million, and the taxi service newly incubated based on the map has become the second in the industry.

Guo Ning is the only executive in the Amap Group who has been responsible for the basic platform, the middle platform, and the business. Before joining Amap, he served as the Senior Technical Director of 360, Technical Director of Alibaba, and Senior Technical Expert of Yahoo China.

Before his promotion to CEO, Guo Ning has been the COO of Amap since 2023, responsible for managing the app platform business and life services section. In March 2023, Alibaba integrated the Koubei in-store business into Amap, and Guo Ning became the actual manager of Alibaba‘s local life in-store business.

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