Chinese B2B e-commerce group Alibaba has announced that to serve the customers more effectively and to ensure the competitiveness and innovation of Taobao.com, the group has decided to separate this subsidiary into three independent companies.

The three companies will be Taobao.com, which will still focus on C2C business; Tmall.com, a B2C e-commerce service provider; and Etao.com, a one-stop Internet shopping search engine.

Jack Ma, chief executive officer of Alibaba, revealed the executive structures of the three companies in an email, which said the three companies will adopt the operating mechanism with one president and one chairman for each. Wu Yongming will be president of Etao.com, reporting to chairman Peng Lei; Jiang Peng will be president of Taobao.com, reporting to chairman Lu Zhaoxi; and Zhang Yong will be president of Tmall.com, reporting to chairman Zeng Ming. In addition, Dai Shan will be responsible for leading the technical and public service support platform to aid the development of the three companies, reporting directly to Ma.

Meanwhile, Ma explained the significance of the separation and said that there are major changes in the global Internet and e-commerce sector; therefore, they decided to raise their strategy from the company level to the group level.