Alibaba to face challenges head-on in post-Ma era

Alibaba saw transactions made on Taobao and Tmall, its two customer-to-customer and business-to-customer websites, exceed 1 trillion yuan ($161.8 billion) last year.

Taobao handles over 90 percent of China's consumer-to-consumer transactions. It has more than 800 million product listings and over 500 million registered users.

In spite of no timetable being disclosed for its listing plan, Alibaba has adjusted its company structure, expanding its digital maps and social media services.

Regarded as Alibaba's "spiritual leader," Ma will continue to make strategic decisions.

Its biggest challenge before listing is how to realize rapid growth due to squeezed profit margins amid severe competition, said Fang Xingdong, board chairman of the Beijing-based IT think tank Chinalabs.com.

Fang said foreign firms such as Amazon and eBay have shown that e-business platforms enter a development plateau after a period of rapid growth.

Alibaba's evaluation will be affected if there is a slow increase period in business before the company's listing, Fang said.

He suggested it attract more users to make up for squeezed profits, and look at new business areas such as Internet financial services.

Big moves in advance

"Mobile Internet appeared when we did not yet fully understand PC Internet. The Big data era comes when our eyes are on mobile Internet," said Ma in a speech on Friday. Big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex it becomes difficult to process.