The Tale of Alibaba and Jack Ma
BENGALURU: It all started in a small apartment room in the city of Hangzhou back in 1999. Jack Ma, an English teacher was venturing into e-commerce at the time when only a few million people in China were online. Ma never wanted his firm to be a local player; he wanted it to be big. When it turned into big, he wanted it to be bigger. But, in a highly competitive market with the already established big fishes like Amazon and eBay, nobody gave Ma’s small company even the slightest of chances. Now, after almost 17 years, Ma has built up an empire that stands tall as the world’s biggest e-commerce platform. This is the story of Alibaba. Last year alone, the company notched up 485 Bn US Dollars worth of sales from its sites. When the company went public in 2014, it raised an eye-popping 25 Bn US Dollars, the largest ever in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. Listed below are some of the small yet big things, gathered from the Economic Times, which made the online juggernaut what it is.
