How Alibaba Founder Jack Ma Became The Richest Man in China

It is always an interesting topic to learn about billionaire businessman who managed to crawl on top of the peak from the ground. Just as much as we love to own that lump sum of fortune, we can’t forget the struggles and efforts the man made behind the loath of billion dollars in bank.

Alibaba’s founder, ex-teacher Jack Ma, is one of the humble Chinese guy who started his business not in the office, not in the café, but merely in his small apartment in Hanzhou. Now, Ma is the richest guy in China and possibly ranks in one of the richest man position worldwide. Alibaba has a great value of market cap and the china’s first online retailer that goes public is able to compete head to head against Wal-Mart and eBay. Alilbaba has a serious vision to iinvade America and Europe continents. After investing almost a billion dollars in the US, Alibaba hosts some of the startup businesses including ShopRunner, Tango and Uber.

An aspiring entrepreneur, Ma who was once an English teacher is now a visionary business leader. He started early with a group of his peers and his saving of $60,000. Alibaba is now the world’s biggest e-commerce company and many schools study the business as part of the analysis subject.
How did Ma learn English anyway?

Ma understands that English is an important language. Everyday, he would guide tourists from foreign countries to show them around the city so he was able to practice his English skill. He waited them at nearby hotels in case the visitors want a private guide tour. He grew up poor and his story was quite similar to Masayoshi Son who was passionate enough to catch his dream in Silicon Valley and becomes the richest guy in Japan.
Jack Ma’s vision

Ma began to realize how important internet is for business. Especially in China where the huge population can be a potential market for the business. He grouped his friends and managed to get $60,000. He formed partnership and promote long term development.

Alibaba actually solved one of the biggest problems in China's economy sector - the lack of conventional stores. After Alibaba existed, it solved the condition that small business merchants were not able to do. Now, Alibaba has reached more than 80% of the country internet commerce. It whopped more than $250 billion of earning last year – which was the double of Amazon’s revenues. The crowdfunding went amazing after the company obtained numerous funds from silver lake, Yahoo, Softbank, and DST Global. It is clearly a big source of investments to have.

Alibaba has managed to answer today’s problem in China. The merchants were not able to sell their products directly to the customers and they had to join the local fair to trade. With such an enormous vibe of sellers, Alibaba steps up as the middleman and becomes e-commerce company that is able to raise the living level of Chinese people. Alibaba does not hold their goods but it collects fee from the commission.

This business has become a scalable in the world and Jack Ma himself never have thought about how the company could come this far. He is persistent in the value that customers should come in the first position in the company’s mission, the second is the employees and the third is the shareholders. He also said that when customers are happy, everyone is happy. The simple premise leads to many other theories that Jack Ma often explained in interviews and seminars. He said that Alibaba has gone through failures and the group keeps positive attitude towards it. He also figured out that the troubles he experienced could be more in the future but he embraces it with positive attitude.

Jack Ma learned from young entrepreneurs because he believes they possess more skills than what he had back then. This is why he keeps an eye to the changes and innovations and if you want to survive, he said, you should be open to that change. Now we learn a lot about how Jack Ma earns his fortune and keeps Alibaba on top of the game.