Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group belongs to China. The stimulating success in the business world of an English teacher Jack Ma is the result of his vision and hard work day and night. Jack Ma established the Alibaba Group in 1999 as a B2B e-commerce website to connect Chinese product makers with foreign customers. However, today Alibaba.com is one of the biggest websites in e-commerce.
Jack Ma was born in Hangzhou, China on 10 December 1964. His real name was Ma Yun. Jack Ma was very fond of learning English from his childhood and for practice, he went to Hangzhou Hotel daily which was located at a passable distance from his home. He used to guide English visitors to the whole city for free so that he could learn English from them and one of the visitors among them named him Jack because his real name Ma Yun was difficult for him to pronounce.
Jack Ma did this work for ten years and after he tried to get admission to the college. The Chinese entrance exam is held once a year and Jack Ma took four years to pass this exam. He took admission at the Hangzhou Institute and did his B.A. in English in 1988. After graduation, Jack Ma was appointed as a lecturer of International Trade and English at Hangzhou Dianzi University. After graduation, Jack Ma applied for jobs at thirty different places but he was always told that he was not that good. Jack Ma applied for a job in one of the famous food chains but he was the only candidate out of 24 who was refused. Jack Ma once told during a conversation that he applied for a police job but he was told that he was absolutely not suitable for the job.
Jack Ma is a self-made billionaire but no one was ready to give him a job in the days of his initial struggle. He faced many failures in this era. He gave tests for admission to various colleges but he was destined to fail. He appeared more than ten times on the admission test of the world-renowned Harvard University but failed. However, he was determined and never let failures become obstacles in his way. He had thought that one day he would be teaching the children in this institute.
Jack Ma learned about the Internet in 1994. One day, he tried to find the meaning of a word on the internet and he was astonished when he could find it on the internet. This was the time when he started working on the Internet. He went to America in 1995 and got information about the Internet from a friend. In April 1995, Jack Ma, his wife, and a friend established their own first company which built websites for other companies. Jack Ma named this company China Yellow Pages and it earned $800,000 within three years. Jack Ma continued making websites with the help of his friend in America.
Jack Ma returned with his full team to Hangzhou in 1999 and laid the foundation of Alibaba. In September 2014, Alibaba traded in billions due to which Alibaba was cataloged among the top companies in the world. Today the income of Alibaba is 134.6 billion per annum.
Jack Ma successfully defended the title to be the richest person in China in the real-time billionaires' list of Forbes Magzine, but due to severe restrictions on internet companies from the Chinese Government and especially to constrain paranormal progress of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma couldn't sustain the title of being the richest person in China. In 2021, Jack Ma was the fifth richest person in China and 67th in the world. Jack Ma has assets worth 24.5 billion dollars.
Jack Ma was once asked how he felt after so many failures. He replied, "Failures are part of life, we should have the habit of accepting failure because no one in the world is perfect". Jack Ma faced numerous failures in his life, but his achievements are far more than his failures and he has buried his failures in the foundation of his success.
In 2004, Chinese Central Television and its viewers reckoned Jack Ma among the ten biggest business leaders in the world. World Economic Forum nominated Jack Ma as the Young Global Leader in 2005. In 2007, Barron nominated Jack Ma as one of the 30 world's best CEOs. In 2009, Jack Ma received the CCTV Economic Person of the Year and Business Leaders of The Decade Awards, and in 2010, Forbes Asia awarded him the title of Hero of the Region. In November 2013, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology awarded him an Honorary Directorate Degree. In 2014, Jack Ma was among the top 30 persons in the world in the yearly ranking of Forbes. In 2015, he got the Asian Award. In 2017, Jack Ma was put on number two on the list of 50 great people in the world. Ma Yun who faced failures at every step never gave up and at last, got the reward. Jack Ma has now attained a respectable position in the world of business. In 2019, he retired as Executive Director of Alibaba and now runs a foundation but he has retained lifetime membership of Alibaba's partnership to play his role in future plannings and ideas of Alibaba Group. Alibaba Partnerships consists of 36 persons of Alibaba Group is a forum that has the authority to nominate directors. Jack Ma still retains 6.22% shares of Alibaba Group but his whole concentration is now on the Jack Ma foundation which he has established on the lines of Bill Gates. He is working on education under the Jack Ma Foundation.
The Secret of Success
Do you know the salary of Jack Ma as an English teacher at the university was only 12 dollars per month, but today he is the founder of one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the world?
Jack Ma shared his experience in an interview at the World Economic Forum, "In the beginning, I knew nothing about technology. In fact, you don't need to know a lot of things. You have to find people who are smarter than you. I always have been in search of people smarter than me. When you find such people, give them an environment where all these intelligent people can work together".
Basically, Jack Ma's advice has two parts:-
1. Make a team of people who know better than you.
2. And make sure that all these intelligent people could work together under one roof.