Saturday, 10 May 2014

The story of Alibaba - From English teacher to billionaire


Jack Ma went from English teacher to billionaire with Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company he co-founded. Also the Alibaba chairman, Ma now has a higher net worth than U.S. moguls such as Google's Eric Schmidt (worth $8.5 billion) and Tesla's Elon Musk (worth $8.8 billion).

The firm has been a dominant force in e-commerce in China and is now the biggest online retailer in the country. The firm generated revenues of 40.5bn yuan ($6.5bn; £3.8bn) in the nine months to the end of December 2013, making a net profit of $2.9bn.

Ma created the company with $60,000 in cash, gathered from 80 friends, back in 1999.  He created a basic web page for a Chinese translation service with a friend, which received a global response within hours. He then left teaching to set up an online business.

Ma holds a mass wedding annually for Alibaba employees and employees can apply for interest-free loans to buy first homes.

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