Jack Ma is a Chinese business tycoon, a philanthropist, investor, and the co-founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational conglomerate.
Early years and education
Jack Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China on September 10, 1964. As a teenager, he began waking up early to visit the city’s main hotel so he could offer tours to visitors of the city and in return would ask them to teach him the English language. In fact, he was nicknamed Jack by one of the tourists he became friends with. Jack Ma knew that he needed education in order to gain money and connections but when he applied to college, he failed the entrance exam, not once but twice. It took him four years to finally pass and on the third attempt, he became successful in entering Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute (currently known as Hangzhou Normal University). Ma became the head of the student council and in 1988, he graduated with a B.A in English.
Career
After Ma graduated, he applied for almost 30 jobs but got rejected by all – including the fast food chain KFC. In an interview, Ma even mentioned that 24 people applied for the job in KFC – 23 were accepted and he was the only guy who was rejected. Ma also revealed that he was rejected to Harvard Business School ten times. Ma’s first career was as a lecturer in English and International Trade at Hangzhou Dianzi University. Ma made $12 a month as an English lecturer but he loved his job.
During a trip to the US in 1995, Ma used the internet for the first time and he instantly realized how powerful it is. Ma’s first search was about ‘beers’ and although he found information related to beer from different countries, he was surprised that he found none from China. It was even more surprising to him that he did not find any general information about China online. It was then that Ma decided to put up an internet company for China. Together with his friend, Ma created a what he called an ‘ugly’ website that is related to China. Just 3 hours after launching the website and making it public, Ma received a few emails from some Chinese investors who wish to know about him.
In April 1995, Jack Ma raised $2,000 with the help of his wife Cathy and a friend, and started their first company – they named it “China Pages” and made websites for companies. Within 3 years, China Pages made US$800,000.
From year 1995 up to 2000, Ma was also an IT Manager at Hilton Worldwide where he was responsible for the daily computer maintenance and operations.
Alibaba
Though Ma’s first two business ventures did not become a big success, he was still determined and in 1999, he returned to Hangzhou with his team and found Alibaba – a business-to-business marketplace website. The website allowed exporters to sell their products online so customers can buy directly. In just one year, the website started attracting members from different parts of the world. In October 1999 and January 2000, Alibaba won a total of $25 million foreign venture capital investment – $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank. Ma’s goal was to improve the global e-commerce so in the year 2003, he founded Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Ali Mama and Lynx. TaoBao was a huge success that eBay saw it as a competition. eBay offered to purchase TaoBao but Ma rejected the offer, instead it got support from Jerry Yang, Yahoo! Co-founder, with a $1 billion investment in exchange for about a 40% stake in the company. Alibaba became one of the most profitable technology companies after raising $25 billion in an initial public offering in US financial history.
In 2013, Jack Ma stepped down as CEO of Alibaba Group, staying on as executive chairman for its nine major subsidiaries: Alibaba.com, Taobao Marketplace, Tmall, eTao, Alibaba Cloud Computing, 1688.com, AliExpress.com, Juhuasuan, and Alipay. In November 2012, Alibaba’s online transaction exceeded one trillion yuan, and it went public on September 19, 2014. Alibaba Group’s $150-billion IPO was the largest offering for a US-listed company in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. In 2016, Alibaba recorded almost $18 billion sales in 24 hours. This has also made Jack Ma one of the richest man in China, with an estimated worth of $34.4 billion.
During the 11.11 (November 11, 2018) Global Shopping Festival in Shanghai, China, Alibaba’s sales volume exceeded 168.2 billion yuan ($24.2 billion).
Ma also announced in September 2018 that he will step down as Alibaba’s executive chairman in the coming year.