Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma on Thursday visited a Freshippo supermarket in central Hunan province, days after he appeared at the Chinese e-commerce giant’s Hangzhou campus in a show of support for the business empire he created more than two decades ago.
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Ma – wearing a grey T-shirt, navy blue coat, white cap and black face mask – was spotted touring a Freshippo store in Hunan’s capital Changsha, according to photos shared by shoppers on social media. In one picture, he was seen walking past the drinks aisle. In another, he was browsing the sushi section.
This comes just two days after Ma showed up at the Hangzhou offices of Xianyu, the online flea market established in 2014 by Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post. He was seen smiling and waving at employees.
The retired entrepreneur in December also visited Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, where he gave a rare public speech on the 20th anniversary of Ant Group’s fintech business, saying he had faith in the “next 20 years” of the company and expected “more miracles”.
Freshippo, known as Hema in its home market, was launched in 2015 and remains an important bricks-and-mortar retail operation of Alibaba, even as the company has moved to divest various noncore offline businesses, including department store Intime and hypermarket operator Sun Art.
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