BackJack Ma and Alibaba: Some key facts
Alibaba's charismatic co-founder and chairman Jack Ma plans to announce a succession plan on Monday. Ma will devote more of his time to philanthropy
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New Delhi: Jack Ma will announce a succession plan on Monday after transforming the e-commerce major into a global behemoth and Asia’s most valuable firm. Some key facts about the man and his company.
About Jack Ma
1) As a teenager, Jack Ma used to cycle to the Hangzhou International hotel in China’s Zhejiang province just to speak to foreigners and improve his English.
2) He failed in his university entrance exam twice, and was rejected 10 times by Harvard.
3) Jack Ma applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected, before he started building websites for Chinese companies.
4) Jack Ma got his first job as an English teacher at the Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering at the age of 24, after graduating from the local teacher’s college.
5) He gave the job up after discovering the Internet.
6) Jack Ma launched Alibaba in 1999 from his second-floor apartment at the Lakeside Gardens in Hangzhou to help small businesses. It was his third venture.
7) In the same year, Alibaba raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank.
8) In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba for 40% stake in the company, and in 2006, Alibaba outmuscled eBay in China.
9) Jack Ma stepped down from his post as CEO in 2013, and remained executive chairman.
10) Among the world’s richest, Jack Ma has a networth of $40 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
11) Jack Ma will focus on philanthropy and education after his retirement. As he told Bloomberg TV in an interview on Friday: “I think some day, and soon, I’ll go back to teaching. This is something I think I can do much better than being CEO of Alibaba."
Inside Alibaba
1) Alibaba is one of the world’s most valuable firms, worth $420.8 billion, based on its share price at the close of trade on Friday.
2)Alibaba made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014, which remains the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history.
3)E-commerce is Alibaba’s bread and butter, and accounts for 80% of the company’s business.
4)Chinese consumers can buy a wide range of products on the company’s Taobao and Tmall platforms, even Boeing 747 cargo planes, which were up for auction last year.
5)Customers can use Alipay, the e-payment app of Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Financial, to pay for the products.
6)The company has also forayed into the entertainment industry, with Alibaba Pictures buying a minority stake in Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners, which owns DreamWorks Pictures, in 2016.
7) Earlier this year, Alibaba paid $750 million for a stake in the cinema division of Chinese firm Wanda Film.
8) The company has invested in Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible.
9) Alibaba also owns video streaming website Youku.
10) The e-commerce major is now betting big on its cloud computing business, Alibaba Cloud.
11) Alibaba is also active in the food space. Earlier this year, it completed the acquisition of Chinese food-delivery leader Ele.me; In August, it teamed up with Starbucks.
(With agency inputs)
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