For months, Daniel Zhang huddled with a small team in an underground garage in Shanghai. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s chief executive was working on a secret plan that would sound crazy even to many of his own colleagues 100 miles away in Hangzhou. Zhang wanted to build a startup inside the e-commerce giant that would combine a grocery store, a restaurant, and a delivery app, using robotics and facial recognition to speed up logistics and payment.That project, Freshippo, has since become a major part of Zhang's blueprint for Alibaba's future, with 150 stores and counting across 17 Chinese cities. On a recent weekday afternoon at a store in Hangzhou, plastic bins shuttled automatically along tracks in the ceiling, collecting goods from around the store for online orders. Deliverymen stood by to transport those goods anywhere within a 1.9-mile radius in as little as 30 minutes.
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