Photos and video clips shared by Xianyu employees showed Ma, 60, sporting a vest emblazoned with the Alibaba logo and smiling broadly. The company’s young staff members were seen jostling for a selfie with the retired entrepreneur, who remains widely regarded as the spiritual leader of the business empire he created in 1999 and the face of China’s private sector.
Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, established Xianyu in 2014 with the aim of creating an entertaining way for Chinese consumers to buy online. Shoppers under the age of 30 made up nearly half of the 178 million monthly active users in China’s second-hand e-commerce market last year, according to data from analytic firm QuestMobile.
Last November, Alibaba consolidated its e-commerce operations into a single group comprising its domestic platforms Taobao and Tmall, international online shopping business, online wholesale market 1688 and Xianyu. The combined entity is led by Jiang Fan, one of Alibaba’s youngest partners.
