JACK MA, the billionaire founder of Alibaba Group who remains the spiritual leader of the tech giant despite keeping a distance from day-to-day business, urged the firm to correct course in an internal memo.

Ma, who retired as chairman of Alibaba in 2019, stunned employees yesterday by replying to a staff post on Alibaba’s internal forum.

In his message, Ma praised decisions taken in recent years by rival PDD Holdings Inc. to wrest market share from China’s e-commerce leader.

But Ma was convinced Alibaba will change and “correct its course,” he said in the post.

“Every great firm is born in a winter,” Ma wrote. “As the AI era for e-commerce gets underway, it’s an opportunity for everyone as well as a challenge.”

Ma’s missive comes as Alibaba navigates turmoil both internally and externally, as a weaker-than-anticipated economic recovery and up-and-coming rivals such as PDD and ByteDance Ltd. are undermining its once-dominant online retail business.

The company this year has undergone a series of internal upheavals, starting with the announcement of a plan to break up the corporation into six smaller pieces.

Then-CEO Daniel Zhang stepped down and the firm brought in two longstanding Ma confidantes, Joseph Tsai and Eddie Wu, to run the firm.

Months later, the pair announced they were shelving the much-anticipated spinoff and listing of its US$11 billion cloud arm, a stunning about-face that called into question the company’s future direction.

It’s unclear where Ma saw the most pressing need for change, but his unusual memo suggests the co-founder felt the need to address the troops.

The comments to Alibaba staff are the latest sign that the once-outspoken billionaire is becoming more publicly active after years of staying out of the spotlight. He just set up a new company, Hangzhou Ma’s Kitchen Food, to process and sell farming products.

PDD reported another outstanding set of results Tuesday. The firm posted a stronger-than-anticipated doubling in revenue, driven by the success of hit U.S. shopping app Temu as well as making new inroads in China.

PDD’s growth far outpaced rivals including Alibaba, underscoring how it’s used promotions to woo bargain-seeking consumers at a time of economic uncertainty. (SD-Agencies)