Open sesame! This man’s story might sound like something out of a fairytale; It’s the only rational explanation. Who else do you know that went from being an uneducated tour guide, to being the richest man in the world’s most populous country, to literally owning the internet?
Jack Ma, whose story is like that of a Chinese Cinderella, first used the Internet in 1995, on a trip to America.
Raised by traditional musician-storytellers, he became a tour guide out of a desire to learn English. He later earned a Bachelor’s degree in English from the Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute even though it took him 3 tries to gain admission into the institution.
Ma taught English in a school for a while, but after the destined encounter with the Internet in 1995, he started an internet company, ‘ChinaYellow Pages’ that created websites for companies, together with his wife and a friend.
Although his first 2 ventures failed, Ma just wouldn’t settle. In 1999, he quit his position as the head of the China International Electronic Commerce Center, a department of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and founded Alibaba.
Alibaba is an online marketplace where buyers and sellers interact. Originally meant to serve the Chinese market, Alibaba now serves 79 million peoples from over 240 countries.
Jack Ma’s success with Alibaba wasn’t without travails. According to Ma, the payment system was not effective, and no bank wanted to work with him, so the site didn’t yield any profit for three years.
Ma decided to start his own payment system called Alipay, even though everyone told him it wouldn’t work. He said, “So many people I talked to at that time about Alipay, they said, ‘This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.’ I didn’t care if it was stupid as long as people could use it.”
The magic of Alibaba once again worked, for today, 800 million people across the world use Alipay.
Jack Ma is currently the 2nd richest man in China, having been unseated from the number one spot early this year by Energy tycoon, Li Hejun, with a net worth of $26 billion, compared to Ma’s $24.5 billion.
Ma however broke the world record in 2013 when he took his company public, with the largest initial pubic offering ever to hit the American stock exchange, at $25 billion!
Ma’s Alibaba is now one of the world’s most prominent online shopping sites.
Not bad for a lowly tour guide and English teacher from Hangzhou.
I want more on the man