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It’ s rare to see Asians dominate the tech industry, where competition is very tough and has been dominated by white men already. But things are slowly starting to change with the start of Jack Ma entering and dominating the Billionaire’ s club.
If you’ re not familiar with Jack Ma, it’ s time you should be.
As the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, the 52-year-old Chinese billionaire from Hangzhou, China is currently Forbes’ 8th richest man in the tech industry and the 33rd richest billionaire in the world. Ma was also the first person from mainland China to be featured on the cover of Forbes. His company, the Alibaba Group Holding Limited, is an e-commerce company that provides transactions between consumers and businesses. Aside from that, the company also provides data-centric cloud computing services, a shopping search engine and electronic payment services. As of last year, it is considered one of the largest internet companies and has already surpassed Walmart as the world’ s largest retailer in the world.
Before Jack Ma started dominating the e-commerce industry in mainland China and became a multi-billionaire, his journey started out with full of struggles and challenges. His career started with full of rejections which included an application to work for the police, Harvard and KFC. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he shared,“ I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twentythree were accepted. I was the only guy …”
While it may have been rough for Ma, he persevered and on 1995, his introduction to the internet eventually led him to an idea that would change how businesses will be operated around the world. During his trip to the US as a translator in early 1995, he was curious as to why no information comes out about China from the internet.
For a country so big and so rich with history, it is a wonder as to why there are no information available, but that was in the 90s and the internet we all depend on now is relatively new for the public back then.
It was in that encounter that led Ma and his friend to create a website that was related to China. On the day the website was launched, he received emails from his countrymen to find out more about him. Ma realized that the internet really had a good potential and later on, started his first company“ Chinapage” with his wife and his friend with USD $ 20,000 as capital.
It wasn’ t easy for Ma when he started his company. Before he did it, most of his friends suggested he should drop the idea because the internet was unfamiliar to everybody. He shared,“ When I first started Alibaba, I was immediately met with strong opposition from family and friends. Looking back, I realised that the biggest driving force for me then was not my confidence in the Internet and the potential it held, but more of this:“ No matter what one does, regardless of failure or success, the experience is a form of success in itself.” You have got to keep trying, and if it doesn’ t work, you always can revert back to what you were doing before.“
“ No matter what one does, regardless of failure or success, the experience is a form of success in itself”
E-Commerce, Online Distribution and Management • March 2017