Jack Ma, the co-founder of largest e-commerce platform in China, Alibaba Group Holding, will retire from the post of chairman after exactly one year from now, that is, September 10, 2019, the company said.

The place will then be taken by current Alibaba Chief Executive Daniel Zhang, while Ma is about to complete his current term of being one of the directors on Alibaba, following the company’s annual general meeting in the year 2020.

On Monday, Ma turned 54, left the role of being chief executive of the company in 2013. While Zhang, 46, has been in the job since the year 2015 after working as a chief operating officer and is very well known for being the architect of Alibaba’s “Singles Day”. The event has become the largest online shopping event in the world.

“Under his stewardship, Alibaba has seen consistent and sustainable growth for 13 consecutive quarters… Starting the process of passing the Alibaba torch to Daniel and his team is the right decision at the right time,” Ma said in a statement letter released by the company.

The company said that Zhang will also have the current title of CEO.

The Forbes magazine puts Ma as one of China’s richest people with a net worth of about USD 36.6 billion. He co-founded Alibaba in the year 1999. And the company has about 66,000 full-time employees and a total market value of some USD 420 billion.

A 36-member group of core company managers, “Alibaba Partnership”, will be mentored under the management of Jack Ma, after he steps down from his current roles.

The group has got the powers to nominate the majority of directors on the board of the company.

Jack Ma was earlier a teacher with no kind of technical background and now he is popular in China and is seen as a wealthy person.

Ma has invested time and money in philanthropy and promoted Alibaba internationally especially at business and political events since he handed over the CEO role.

In last year, Ma invested about CNY 300 million (USD 45 million in a rural education project in China. And in Newcastle, Australia, he has also established a scholarship program.

In the first half of 2018, Alibaba remained in robust revenue growth, but now its profit margins have been squeezed by big-ticket investment as it tries to maintain pole position in payments and e-commerce.

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