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About Jack Ma – China’s Richest Man

Nowadays, teens are showing interest in enduring with the effective way of leading life, the entrepreneurial or business way. Say in a country, a lakh is sparked with ideas, thousands come out with model and hundreds succeeds; most importantly, few tens rules the world with the doodads amid the hundreds. Major backlog behind this, is scrubbing when hit with a rejection which attributes to lack of mental confidence and perseverance.

We all come across many idols, leaders but we choose only few as our own inspirations. The inspirers inspire by their inspiring life story. In the fact, Jack Ma, a Chinese Business Magnate will all-set to be an idol for those people, hit up with obstacles, but trying to come out with something in life. Studies have also told that by going through the successive life stories of people, imparts a positive effect on the brains of the individual. Almost all face failures and turndowns, but it depends on your mind, how you take up the situation as! Whether as a challenge or an obstacle!

With this, lets don’t waste the time! Let’s get into the body!

20 Points on the Chinese Business Magnate:

Name : Jack Ma / Ma Yun

Born on/in : 10 September 1964(age 55); in Hangzhou, China

Current status : Co-founder & Former Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group

Known as : Business Magnate, Investor, Politician, Philanthropist

Education : Bachelor of Arts in English (1988)

Net worth : US $42.3 Billion

  • Born on 10 Sept 1964, Ma Yun was driven towards learning English. He used to conversate English with English-Speakers at Hangzhou International Hotel, at early years. He was a tourist guide for English tourists for nine years, which made him pen pals with one of those foreigners, who later named him, ‘Jack’.
  • Ma was scrawny and often got into fights with fellow mates in school. “I was never afraid of opponents who were bigger than I”, says Ma.
  • Generally, students would toil to complete the degree; but, Ma was struggling to just join a College. He was thrown away three times at the entrance tests to join Hangzhou Normal University to pursue B.A. in English. His perseverance made him to enter the college in the 4th attempt.
"You have got to keep trying, and if it doesn’t work, you always can revert back to what you were doing before."
  • Jack Ma after graduated in 1988, worked as an English and International Trade lecturer in Hangzhou Danzi University.
  • Fair-haired on teaching, he applied for the same in Harvard Business School for 10 times and was rejected each time.
  • BUSINESS: Typically, one would fed up if not bounced with the positive results on any beginning; Ma is an exception. His business career was a slap on the face 30 times, when he applied for jobs.
  • Can you take up the situation of being applied to a job among 24 candidates and 23 got selected except only you? Well, that was the case of Ma Yun, when he stepped up KFC, he recalled in an interview.
  • Laying all these veto and duds as steps, he was involved to the booming of internet in 1994 and started his first company Hangzhou Haibo Translation Agency.

Opportunities lies in the place where the complaints are!

  • A year later, he with his friends visited US for a Government project. There he met for the first with Internet and Computers. He searched for the word ‘beer’ in Mosaic browser, which popped up the results from different countries, but none from China. Eventually, ‘China’ didn’t pop up any single results, though. He decided it was the first time for China and its people to get on the internet.
  • Ma Yun co-founded China pages with He Yibing, a computer teacher in April 1995, a platform to develop websites for Chinese companies. Signing the domain chinapages.com in US in May 10 1995, the platform raised US$800,000 within three years.
  • He pursued on it for next three years with aid of his US friends; said “The day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house”, and on a very slow dial-up connection, “we waited three and a half hours and got half a page”, he recalled. “We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved the Internet existed”.
  • In 4th April, 1999, Ma co-founded Alibaba, an e-commerce startup with 17 of his friends as investors. He was noticed instantly by investors across China, after the launch of the website.
  • Initially, Alibaba was not fed with outside investors, later it raised $20 million from Soft Bank, $4million from Goldmann Sachs in 1999. The company seemed to be a pin point for the businesses and global e-commerce system in China and to deliver World Trade Organization challenges.

Go Big or Go Home!

  • Building trust among the people of China that an online system of payment and package transfers is safe was the biggest challenge Jack Ma and Alibaba faced, a challenge that Jack will cherish for his lifetime.
  • From 2003, he came out with four different companies, Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Ali Mama and Lynx.
  • Jack Ma having never written a single line of code or selling anything to anyone, he perceives to be the Richest Man in China, running one of the biggest e-commerce networks in the planet.
  • Alibaba’s 2014 IPO in New York set a record as the world’s biggest public stock offering, raising $25 billion.
  • Ma served as the Chairman of Alibaba Group, a holding company of 9 major subsidiaries from his initial years, till 10 September 2018, giving the chair to Daniel Zhang.
  • Jack Ma founded Jack Ma foundation, a philanthropic organization on improving education, environment and public health. He sits on the Global board of the Natural Conservancy and spoke during the session of the Clinton Global initiative in 2015. He’s also been instrumental in funding a 27000 acre natural reserve in China.

When You Change, The World will Change!

Did You Know?
►  He owns a vineyard in France.
►  Ma is a fan of martial arts and has sparred against Jet Li and others in a short promotional film.

References:

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