By Sheetal Sukhija, Shanghai Sun
08 Sep 2018, 23:41 GMT+10
BEIJING, China - Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma has announced his plans to retire, in a bid to focus on "philanthropy."
A former English teach Jack Ma, who co-founded Alibaba in 1999, is today one of China's richest men and the company is today counted amongst one of the world's biggest internet companies.
The firm currently has a market value of over $400 billion and includes online selling, film production and cloud computing.
According to the 2017 Forbes' China rich list, Ma's current net personal wealth meanwhile stands at $40 billion - which makes him the third richest person in China.
On Saturday, in an interview with the New York Times, Ma announced that he would step down as executive chairman of the Alibaba eCommerce on Monday, when he turns 54.
Ma was quoted as saying in the report that he will remain on Alibaba's board of directors but would focus more on philanthropy in education.
He further added in the interview that retirement would to be the end of an era but "the beginning of an era."
He added, "I love education."
In a separate interview, Ma told Bloomberg TV that he wanted to create a personal foundation like Bill Gates.
Ma said, "There's a lot of things I can learn from Bill Gates. I can never be as rich, but one thing I can do better is to retire earlier. I think some day, and soon, I'll go back to teaching. This is something I think I can do much better than being CEO of Alibaba."
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