Select Page

Ma Yun, known professionally as Jack Ma, is a Chinese business magnate who is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a conglomerate of Internet-based businesses. He is one of China’s richest men, as well as one of the wealthiest people in Asia, with a net worth of US$47.8 billion, as of November 2017. He has become a global icon in business and entrepreneurship, one of the world’s most influential businessmen, and a philanthropist. This article is about JackMa, His Rag to riches story, How he started Alibaba? Why he named his business Alibaba? Inspiring quotes from Jack Ma.

Childhood of Jack Ma

Ma is a true rags-to-riches story. He grew up poor in communist China, failed his college entrance exam twice, and was rejected from dozens of jobs, including one at KFC, before finding success with his third internet company, Alibaba.

He and his siblings grew up at a time when communist China was increasingly isolated from the West, and his family didn’t have much money when they were young. After then-US president Richard Nixon visited Hangzhou in 1972, Ma’s hometown became a tourist mecca. As a teenager, Ma started waking up early to visit the city’s main hotel, offering visitors tours of the city in exchange for English lessons. The nickname Jack was given to him by a tourist he befriended.

Without money or connections, the only way Ma could get ahead was through education. After high school, he applied to go to college — but failed the entrance exam twice. After a great deal of studying, he finally passed on the third try, going on to attend Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute. He graduated in 1988 and started applying for as many jobs as he could.

He received more than a dozen rejections — including from KFC — before being hired as an English teacher. Jack Ma applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected by all. “I went for a job with the police; they said, ‘you’re no good,'” Ma told interviewer Charlie Rose. “I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted. I was the only guy…“. In addition, he applied 10 times for Harvard and got rejected.

Jack Ma Business Journey

He started a translation service business. Upon his first visit to the United States in 1995 as a translator, to help a Chinese firm recover a payment, Jack Ma got introduced to the Internet. Ma’s first online search was “beer,” but he was surprised to find that no Chinese beers turned up in the results. It was then that he decided to found an internet company for China.

He and his friends decided to lunch a site about China and Chinese products online, known as “Chinapage”, or China Yellow Page that listed Chinese businesses and their products. Within the same day, he began to receive emails from people around the world requesting that they partner up. That experience taught Ma about the incredible power of connectivity.

Later, believing that “Chinapage” will get better funding, Ma partnered with a government entity that had majority control. Unfortunately, that entity brought along the rigid bureaucracy that stifled away many of Ma’s visionary projects and frustrated him; which led to Ma’s eventual departure. Ma took up a government job for a short period at the ministry of foreign trade and economic cooperation.

In 1999, after leaving the government job, Ma took a second bite at internet-based business ventures by grouping 18 people (including himself and his wife) at his home and sold them a dream to found Alibaba with the goal of facilitating international trade for small and medium ventures based in China.

Company lore has it that Ma came up with the name Alibaba while sitting in a San Francisco coffee shop. In Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, a secret password unlocks a trove filled with unbelievable riches. Ma’s company has, in a way, revealed the potential of small and mid-sized businesses across the globe.

In 2003 Ma launched an online auction site named  Taobao.com, charging zero commission, and took on a multinational e-commerce giant, eBay.

Ma succeeded in getting Yahoo to invest a sizable USD 1 Billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba in 2005.

In September 2014 Alibaba became one of the most valuable tech companies in the world after raising $25 billion, billion in an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange the largest initial public offering in US financial history. Ma now serves as executive chairman of Alibaba Group, which is a holding company with nine major subsidiaries: Alibaba.com, Taobao Marketplace, Tmall, eTao, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Juhuasuan, 1688.com, AliExpress.com and Alipay.

Ma enjoys a cult status within China and outside. A charismatic leader known to have a flair for the wild, Jack is referred to as ‘Crazy Jack’ by the employees and also doubles up as their ‘spiritual leader’.

When Jack Ma stepped down from his role as the CEO of the company. And he did this with some fanfare and pizzazz by singing Chinese pop songs in front of the 40,000-strong Alibaba Group employees and customers.

An interesting video about JackMa.

What is Alibaba ?

So What is Alibaba? It is an online commerce company, a search engine, a bank, a shipping service, a messaging platform and, a media house – all in one package. Alibaba is a combination of Amazon, eBay and Paypal with a dash of Google. Alibaba has following companies.

  • Taobao: China’s biggest shopping site for small merchants. It does not charge transaction fees from the sellers. It make money through Advertising. The small businesses have to advertise if they want their products to be visible amongst over 800 million items.
  • Tmall: Focuses on online sales of bigger merchantes like Nike, GAP. It charges an upfront fee to open a store as it is more exclusive and takes a commission on each transaction. Together Taobai and Tmall bring in most Alibaba’s revenues.
  • Alibaba.com: Connects Chinese exporters with companies globally, it enables sales between importers and exporters from more than 200 countries and regions. The Chinese portal 1688.com is the domestic version of the same. In addition, AliExpress.com accords smaller buyers the facility to buy small quantities of goods at wholesale prices.
  • Alipay: a payment app like PayPal that helps to buy movie tickets, cab rides. Alipay controls 50% of China’s 600 million online payment accounts. More than 300 worldwide merchants use Alipay to sell directly to consumers in China. Transactions in 12 foreign currencies are supported by the payments wing of Alibaba.
  • AliExpress : AliExpress is an online retail service for small offline sellers to sell their products to online buyers.
  • Alibaba has large stakes in Welbo, the Chines Twitter, and Youku Tudou, a YouTube-like website.
About Jack Ma and how he started Alibaba

About JackMa and how he started Alibaba

Singles Day and Alibaba

Singles day, sales holiday takes place on November 11 each year, supposedly because of the loneliness of the number 11 with its two ones. Started in the 1990s to help single people celebrate a sort of anti-Valentines holiday, Alibaba took advantage of the sentiment in 2009 by encouraging people to buy gifts for themselves since they don’t have a significant other.

In 2016 Alibaba recorded $17.8 billion in sales during its 24-hour Singles Day event, up from $14.3 billion in 2015. In 2017 customers are expected to spend $23 billion on Alibaba’s platform.

Jack Ma’s Quotes

If you don’t do it, nothing is possible. If you do it, at least, you have the hope that there’s a chance.”

“It doesn’t matter if I failed. At least I passed the concept on to others. Even if I don’t succeed, someone will succeed.”

Today is cruel. Tomorrow is crueller. And the day after tomorrow is beautiful.

The very important thing you should have is patience.

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.

Trust the young people; trust this generation’s innovation. They’re making things, changing innovation every day. And all the consumers are the same: they want new things, they want cheap things, they want good things, they want unique things. If we can create these kinds of things for consumers, they will come.

I think young generation is always better than the last generation. No matter you like it or don’t like it. My father said, ‘Jack, I’m so good, you’ll never be’ – but I’m better than him. My father is better than my grandfather. My children will be better than us.

I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.

I call Alibaba 1,001 mistakes.’ We expanded too fast, and then in the dot-com bubble, we had to have layoffs. By 2002, we had only enough cash to survive for 18 months. We had a lot of free members using our site, and we didn’t know how we’d make money. So we developed a product for China exporters to meet U.S. buyers online. This model saved us.


If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat ten of them

Share
123movies

If you love watching movies online for free, moviebox pro apk is one of the best in the market.

123 free movies cuevana.email