“Alibaba is a company aiming to help solve social problems. In 20 years, we hope to serve two billion consumers around the world, empower 10 million profitable businesses and create 100 million jobs,” wrote Ma in the annual letter to shareholders, stressing that the group would be in for an even more difficult journey than the one it has gone through.

Ma expects three more decades of fast technological change across industries. The change will include transformation of traditional retailers in a multi-trillion dollar market.

“Throughout history, technological disruptions have followed similar trajectories: 20 years of technological disruption followed by 30 years of further rapid change as new technologies are applied throughout society,” the letter says.

Alibaba aims to invite retailers to join its system of online selling platforms, advertising tools as well as cloud computing offerings.

“We are working to create the fundamental digital and physical infrastructure for the future of commerce, which includes marketplaces, payments, logistics, cloud computing, big data and a host of other fields,” the CEO wrote, adding that the company didn’t try to switch transactions from offline to online.