Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of China's e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, will step down as executive chairman on Monday to spend more time focusing on education, he has told the New York Times.
He is to remain on the company's board of directors and mentor the company's management, he said in an interview with the paper published on Friday.
When he retires on Monday at the age of 54, it will not be the end of an era but "the beginning of an era," adding, "I love education," he said.
He had previously scaled down his role in Alibaba by stepping down as CEO in 2013.
Ma, now China's richest man and worth nearly 40 billion dollars, had an inauspicious start at life.
At public speaking events, he has spoken openly about failing his college entrance exams twice before qualifying and later became an English teacher.
He also repeats how he was rejected by 30 different companies in the years before founding Alibaba, including a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, in to show that "failure" is an important business lesson.
While struggling in China, an early encounter with the internet led him to found Alibaba in 1999 out of his apartment in his hometown of Hangzhou, Ma told US journalist Charlie Rose in a 2017 interview.
His timing was impeccable, as well, coinciding with China's rapid economic development and ascension to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Alibaba has since become one of the biggest retailers in the world through core businesses like Alibaba.com, TMall, and Taobao, China's largest online marketplace.
When it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014, Alibaba broke world records with a 25-billion-dollar initial public offering.
Ma's self-made image has earned him lasting respect in China where he is revered alongside top leaders.
Much of Alibaba's success has been due to its heavy investment in logistics networks to deliver goods across China and its now ubiquitous mobile payment system Ant Financial, formerly known as Alipay.
Alongside home-grown internet giants Baidu and Tencent, the company has transformed the Chinese retail landscape in the past decade.
Where China was responsible for 1 per cent of global e-commerce transactions a decade ago that number has grown to 40 per cent, according to McKinsey & Company, thanks in part to the rise of e-commerce platforms.
Alibaba's growth has not been without hiccups and has faced problems with Chinese regulators over the high number of counterfeit goods for sale on Taobao. The US Trade Representative also blacklisted the website in 2016 and 2017 for selling fake goods.
