Alibaba veteran to step down at Local Services Group as e-commerce giant proceeds with sweeping restructuring

The head of Alibaba Group Holding’s Local Services Group (LSG), one of the six major business units being spun off from the e-commerce giant, is stepping down amid an ongoing restructuring process.

Yu will pass on his chairman and chief executive roles to a younger group of managers, with Wu Zeming stepping up at Ele.me and Liu Zhenfei taking up the senior roles at Amap. The 47-year-old Yu will remain as a partner at Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post. The statement did not elaborate on whether or who will take on the senior roles at LSG.

Alibaba’s cloud computing unit slashes prices by up to 55% on 100 core products

Last December Taobao and Tmall Group, Alibaba’s bread-and-butter e-commerce business, appointed six new executives to “create a culture of innovation that will foster our new generation of talent ”.

Under Yu, LSG achieved steady growth in recent quarters. The unit’s revenue grew 13 per cent year-on-year in the latest quarter, driven by growth at both Amap and Ele.me, according to Alibaba.

Amap is one of only five Chinese apps with over 700 million monthly active users, according to research firm Yuanchuan Institution, alongside Tencent Holdings’ WeChat, ByteDance’s Douyin, and Alibaba’s Taobao and Ant Group’s Alipay.

Alibaba’s shares closed 0.21 per cent higher at HK$73.05 on Friday in Hong Kong.