Daniel Zhang’s 2021 Letter to Alibaba Shareholders: be a responsible company with over 1 billion active users
On July 27, Alibaba Group released its fiscal year 2021 annual report, and Daniel Zhang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, issued a letter to shareholders. The letter stated that Alibaba hopes to become a company that integrates the consumer Internet and the industrial Internet better. This is a very important positioning and direction for Alibaba's future.
This annual report highlights Alibaba’s work in "carbon reduction", "village revitalization" and "employment promotion". The annual report shows that in the past year, Alibaba has continued to promote low-carbon development in fields such as data centers, logistics, and idle economy; launched the "Hot Land Program" to promote rural revitalization; increased support for entrepreneurship and employment, and created nearly 70 million jobs directly and indirectly.
For the 12 months ended March 31, 2021, the average Power Usage Effectiveness(PUE) of Alibaba's domestic self-operated data centers was about 1.3, which was lower than the global average. Alibaba Cloud Data Center purchased over 280 million kWh of renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions by 300,000 tons. At the end of May, Alibaba Cloud released a zero-carbon cloud plan to support green technology innovation.
The annual report also gave corresponding feedback on the low-carbon development that was hotly discussed this year, and stated that it was clearly reflected in specific business scenarios. The annual report shows that in the last fiscal year, Cainiao advocated the use of biodegradable packaging, with 20,000 recycle boxes covering almost all provinces in China; Xianyu has further become the main platform for young people’s low-carbon life; this year’s Tmall 618 first promoted “green GMV”. The carbon emissions of each order dropped by 17.6% year-on-year. In addition, Ali has referred to the "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" (LEED) system standard in the construction of its new park, used shading systems and heat pumps to reduce power consumption, introduced a rainwater recovery system to promote recycling and reduce the burden of drainage.
Daniel Zhang mentioned that in fiscal year of 2021, Alibaba's global annual active consumers exceeded the 1 billion milestone, reaching 1.13 billion. Domestic and overseas consumers have created an annual transaction scale of RMB 8.119 trillion on the Alibaba platform. As the second pillar of growth, Alibaba Cloud has become the [world’s third-largest](https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4000294/market-share-it-services-worldwide-2020) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider, with revenue growing 50% year-over-year to surpass RMB60 billion.
He pointed out that after ten years of construction, Alibaba Cloud became a leader in the market. The New Retail matrix has also become rich and multidimensional after years of work. Amap has now been part of the Alibaba ecosystem for eight years with around 100 million daily active users.
About enterprise responsibility, Daniel Zhang said “Internet platform businesses inherently share common characteristics with society. We need to give more thought towards the positive value being created for society; addressing challenges related to essential technology; supporting the development of rural revitalization; becoming more environmentally friendly and sustainable. We want to be a responsible corporate citizen and a good company in substance.”
In addition, regarding the huge fine on Alibaba before, he responded in the letter: sincerely accept this and resolutely obey it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StockMarket/comments/ot53av/daniel_zhangs_2021_letter_to_alibaba_shareholders/
