Having left his leadership post for Alibaba Group Holding (Alibaba) some time back, Jack Ma knew he wanted to dive deep into his other passions – food and agro industries. Case in point, he used his experience as a founder and tech innovator to start the all-new Hangzhou Ma’s Kitchen Food.
Incorporated late last week, this new business venture for Ma opened for business with a registered capital of 10 million Chinese Yuan (~US$1.4 million/~RM) with two very specific focuses:
- Marketing and selling pre-packed food
- Processing and retailing edible agricultural products
Ma is alone in his latest startup as he has Jason Pau, Executive Director, International Programmes, Jack Ma Foundation, as well as Xu Shi, former executive from the Jack Ma Foundation. Both, respectively, are the Executive Director/General Manager and Supervisor for the all-new venture.
The move Ma is making, while not new to many startup founders, is making waves as pre-packed ready-to-eat meals are part of a growing trend that appeared as part of the lasting lifestyle changes from the pandemic and lockdown periods. Investors and venture capitalists in China have already moved to finance this trend as they believe there is growth potential in the coming months.
A report from iiMedia Research report on catering consumption in China confirmed that the domestic industry for ready-to-eat meals is expected to reach a sales record of CNY510 billion (~RM333 billion/~US$71.3 billion) and has the potential to double that value in the next three years. Another report from MarketReasearch.com also reported how the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for this industry recorded at 7.8% for the 2017 to 2022 time period and will climb by another 3.3% for the 2022 to 2027 timeline.
Ma’s Kitchen is not the first move into the food and agro-industries space for the eCommerce giant founder. He had also been involved with a new fishery startup called 1.8 Metres Marine Technology and had visited various upstream and downstream operations within this sector.
For now, it is anyone’s bet on how the pre-packed ready-to-eat meals sector will be like or it will eventually turn out. Even so, with Ma’s involvement in this space, the excited chatter can only go up from here on out.