New Venture for Jack Ma: Agriculture and Ready Meals
It seems that multi-billionaire Jack Ma, once the emperor of the tech industry with Alibaba, is now venturing into a new realm: agriculture and ready meals. The 59-year-old entrepreneur has established Hangzhou Ma's Kitchen Food, a company aimed at both selling packaged food and processing and distributing agricultural products domestically.
With a capital sum of ten million Chinese yuan (approximately 1.4 million dollars), this new venture could be setting its sights on the booming ready-meal industry in China. It's worth noting that this sector has been on a massive upswing since the COVID-19 pandemic, with sales expected to reach an astounding 71 billion dollars in 2022. Indeed, the number of packages delivered by platforms like Meituan have skyrocketed by 336% as a result of the crisis.
This shift realized by Jack Ma might signify his entry into the ready meals game. The potential for the Chinese ready meals market to double in the next three years means that this new venture could capitalize on this growth, benefiting from Ma's extensive experience in the tech industry.
Intermediate title?
Ma's meteoric rise to fame had once been marked by his unrelenting criticism of China's financial regulators, labeling the system as outdated and comparing it to traditional Chinese pawnshops. This proved to be a costly move, ending in his summoning by the Chinese authorities and the cancellation of Alibaba's Ant Financial's IPO at the eleventh hour.
Presently, Ma has been distancing himself from the world of tech, spending much of last year living in Japan and researching agricultural technology. In October 2021, he traveled to Spain to learn about agriculture and environmental technology, subsequently visiting the Netherlands, Japan, and Thailand for further insights. In May, he secured a teaching position at Tokyo College, with a focus on sustainable agriculture and food production.
Given the current status and potential growth of the Chinese food market, it's evident that Ma's latest venture into the agriculture and food production industry could yield promising results. Some salient points highlighting the dimension of this market are as follows:
- Market Size and Growth: The Chinese food market is projected to reach $1.736 trillion by 2025, with an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.13% . Online sales are forecasted to account for 20.1% of total revenue by 2025, further fueled by the surge of high-quality and innovative food products demanded by consumers .
- Industry Trends: The Chinese ready meals industry is observing a shift to health-focused consumers, with trends like "light health" and "green foods" gaining prominence. KFC China, for example, now offers a range of "green food" options to cater to health-conscious consumers .
- Competitive Landscape: The industry remains highly competitive, with established players like Haidilao pushing the frontier through multi-brand ventures and novel strategies. Haidilao's "Pomegranate Plan" focuses on developing internal talent, fueling the expansion of its restaurant empire that now includes over 50 new sub-brands .
- Potential Growth: The industry is expected to persistently grow, fueled by the rapidly-rising wages of middle-class consumer groups and increasing disposable personal income. By 2025, the disposable personal income of average local residents is projected to reach around 54,153.00 RMB, creating a robust market for the Chinese consumer sector .
