By BAI Fan

Joe Tsai was at Cainiao headquarters in Hangzhou when Alibaba announced that Daniel Zhang would step aside as president and CEO of the group in September. Tsai will succeed him as president. Another co-founder, Eddie Wu, will step up to become CEO.

One of the co-founders of Alibaba Group Holding and the rainmaker behind the Nasdaq listing in 2014, Tsai was CFO from 1999 – 2013 during the construction of the financial and legal structure of Alibaba. He became Alibaba's executive vice chairman in May 2013. Tsai is currently the president of Cainiao.

In recent years, Tsai has spent most of his time abroad.

On March 28, Alibaba split itself into six divisions, logistics operation Cainiao being one of them. Cainiao already has an IPO in the pipeline, planning to go public within the next 18 months, raising US$2 billion (14 billion yuan).

Alibaba owns 67 percent of Cainiao, the fastest-growing business among the new six. Revenue in Q1 was 18.9 billion yuan, more than half from overseas, where the freighter has 20 warehouses.

Cainiao recently acquired 25 percent of STO Express for 4 billion yuan. Hangzhou Ali Venture Capital, another subsidiary of Alibaba, owns 20.5 percent of yet another delivery company, Yuantong Express.