(Yicai) March 1 -- Alibaba Group Holding's food delivery and mapping division has chosen four executives to take up the reins at the local services group after the current chief steps down as chairman and chief executive this month to focus on eWTP Capital, an Alibaba-backed investment fund.

Yu, aged 48, will leave his post on March 31，Yicai learnt from the Hangzhou-based internet behemoth today. He will remain a partner at Alibaba, focusing on the international expansion of eWTP Capital while providing strategic support for Alibaba's business.

The local services group, one of Alibaba's six major business segments, contains food delivery platform Ele.me and navigation service Amap. The two platforms will establish separate chairman and CEO positions.

The next Ele.me chairman will be Chief Technology Officer Wu Zeming and the CEO will be Han Liu, the head of logistics subsidiary Fengniao. Both Wu and Han were born in the 1980s.

Liu Zhenfei, the president of Amap, will be promoted to chairman and Chief Operating Officer Guo Ning will become CEO. Both of them were born in the 1970s and have long served in frontline management positions at Amap.

Yu has served Alibaba for almost a decade. Before that, he was chairman and CEO of UC Mobile, a mobile browser developer. After Alibaba acquired UC in 2014, Yu became a partner at the owner of Taobao and Tmall, overseeing digital marketing, entertainment, and lifestyle services.

The local services group improved its performance in the three months ended last December as it recorded a net loss of CNY2.1 billion (USD291 million), narrowing by 29 percent from a year ago, according to the latest earnings report. Revenue rose by 13 percent to CNY15.2 billion (USD2.1 billion), accounting for about 6 percent of Alibaba's total.

Editor: Emmi Laine