Jack Ma born on 10-Sep-1964, his real name is Ma
Yun and known professionally Jack Ma.
Jack Ma is Inspirational to many young dynamic and ambitious. and Self-Made Billionaire and CEO of Alibaba.
He is one of China's richest men with a net worth of
US$42.4 billion, as well as one of the wealthiest people in the world.
Jack Ma is seen as a global ambassador for Chinese
business and as such is frequently listed as one of the world's most powerful
people by Forbes.
In 2017, he was ranked 2nd in the annual "World's 50
Greatest Leaders" list by Fortune.
This little boy grew up to be none other
than Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba. In March 2016, this leading Chinese
e-commerce company boasted of a net income of US$42.4 billion.
While Jack Ma’s incredible story of earning
$12 a month to becoming a multi-billionaire is a definitive rags to riches
tale, he attributes his sparkling success to relentless effort over a turn of
luck.
“Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow
will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine,” he has often
said.
Today, the almost stubborn persistence of a
young man who refused to bend down to fate has finally paid off.
To nobody’s real surprise, Jack Ma was
recently announced the richest person in the whole of China, and one of the top
billionaires of Asia as well.
For Jack Ma, this success today has come at
the price of his youth in a way, where he stepped one foot into quicksand more
times than he can count today.
However, this also taught him to keep one
foot on the ground and pull his way back onto safe land and watch his step in
the future.
Like many legends before him, Jack Ma
refused to be told no. And like his fictional idol, Forest Gump, he ran like
hell towards his own finish line no matter the challenges thrown at him. From a
very young age, Jack Ma realised his failures and weaknesses, and learned to
keep working on them until one day, they became his prize-points.
Coming of age “I flunked my exam for
university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city's
worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high
school English teacher.
In my university, I was elected student
chairman and later became chairman of the city's Students Federation.”
Coming last in class can have a serious impact on any child’s self-esteem,
making them feel completely worthless.
Despite running a leading tech company,
Jack Ma was, and still is, terrible at math. He failed in multiple subjects
in school and even failed the university exam twice before being accepted into
an obscure college.
Fortunately for him, he possessed an
insight that reassured him that topping a class doesn’t equate to being
intelligent or driven. Names like Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, and
Rabindranath Tagore reaffirmed his belief that intellectual prowess is not
limited to the four walls of a classroom.
He never stopped believing that his excellence
lay elsewhere.
Later, Jack Ma even applied to Harvard University 10 different times and faced
rejection all 10 times.
This goes to show that more than securing a
seat, his goal was to keep taking up a seemingly impossible challenge and try
to work it out in different ways.
Pre-Alibaba “I got my story, my dream,
from America. The hero I had is Forrest Gump...I like that
guy. I've been watching that movie about 10 times. Every time I get
frustrated, I watch the movie. I watched the movie before I came here again to
New York.
I watched the movie again telling me
that no matter whatever changed, you are you.” Like any other student
post-graduation, Jack Ma was faced with the challenge of out-competing his batch
mates and fresher’s across the country to secure a good job with a sufficient
salary.
A degree in English from a less than
reputable college certainly didn’t work in his favour, and although he
applied to 30 different jobs for safe-keeping, he was rejected from all. In
an interview with Bloomberg, he even confessed that out of 24 candidates, he
was the only one who was turned away from a position at KFC.
On applying for a post in the police, he
was told that he was “no good”. That is more number of rejections than
anyone should have to count at one given go, and if it were you and me, it
would have possibly led to a breakdown of some kind.
But for Jack Ma, the challenge had become a
part and parcel of life.
He managed to procure a small gig as a
teacher in English and International Trade from the university he graduated
from.
While his pockets were practically empty,
his heart was full of hope for the next step in his career. Even though at that
point, he didn’t have a semblance of a clue to what it would be.
Post-Alibaba “In the
beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we
made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up,
the restaurant owner would say, ‘Your bill was paid.’ And there
would be a note saying, ‘Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I
made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.’”
When Jack Ma set up Alibaba in 1999, it
wasn’t an immediate success.
The Chinese economy had not yet developed
to support the e-commerce industry, which was believed to be a threat to
traditional shop businesses.
At every step of the way, Jack Ma had to
fight off resistance – from shopkeepers convinced that he was trying to put
them out of business to government authorities who were suspicious of the
privacy-factor that this online business model would affect.
Coupled with this was the fact that Jack Ma’s
vision for the company entailed limited promotions for his existing partners,
who were told that they could not rise beyond the ranks of managers.
He did this so that a group of new hires
would be attracted enough to occupy the open high managerial positions.
This proved to be a fatal miscalculation on
Ma’s part, since it led to the segmentation of the company into many
unproductive layers and led some of his best people to walk out and take their
resources with them.
However, he went on to rectify this mistake
and concentrate on making his existing team a stronger, more unified unit. In
the meanwhile, his efforts began to be recognised overseas. Soon enough, the
company received its first round of funding from foreign investors – a step in
the direction of making it the unchallenged force it is in the e-commerce world
today.
As Jack Ma often puts it, “Never give
up & the most important thing you should have is patience.” without
patience, you can never reach even a fraction of your true potential- which
someday, could even change the world.
Jack Ma – Quotes.
Never
give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will
be sunshine.
I like
to play cards. I'm not very good, because I don't want to calculate, I just
play by instinct. But I've learned a lot of business philosophy by playing
poker.
I want
to stress the importance of being fair to our readers. You should not impose
your own view and prejudice on the readers and try to lead them to a
conclusion. As a reader, I understand what a fair report is.
The
more I come to know about the outside world's perception of China, the more I
feel there are all sorts of misunderstandings, and to a certain extent, people
do not get the full picture from the media. A lot of foreigners have few
opportunities to visit China, and a lot of Chinese people do not have the
chance to go to Europe or to the West.
I
think young generation is always better than last generation. No matter you
like it or don't like it. My father said, 'Jack, I'm so good, you'll never be'
- but I'm better than him. My father is better than my grandfather. My children
will be better than us.
Every
time there's an election, people start to criticize China.
I call
Alibaba '1,001 mistakes.' We expanded too fast, and then in the dot-com bubble,
we had to have layoffs. By 2002, we had only enough cash to survive for 18
months. We had a lot of free members using our site, and we didn't know how
we'd make money. So we developed a product for China exporters to meet U.S.
buyers online. This model saved us.
I tell
the government, if people have no jobs, you are in trouble. Government will be in
trouble. My job is to help more people have jobs.
Jack Ma timeline:
·
After that, Ma attended Hangzhou Teacher's Institute (currently
known as Hangzhou Normal University) and graduated in 1988 with a B.A. in
English.
·
Ma wanted to improve the global e-commerce system and from 2003 he
founded Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Ali Mama and Lynx.
·
Forbes China also selected him as one of the Top 10 Most Respected
Entrepreneurs in China by in 2009.
·
In May 2009, Time magazine selected Ma as one of the world’s 100
most powerful people.
·
In 2013, he became chairman of the board for The Nature
Conservancy's China Program; this was one day after he stepped down from
Alibaba as company CEO.
·
In 2017, he was ranked 2nd in the annual "World's 50 Greatest
Leaders" list by Fortune.
Awards and honours.
·
In 2004, Jack Ma was honoured as one
of the “Top 10 Economic Personas of the Year” by China Central Television
[CCTV].
·
In Sep 2005, the World Economic
Forum selected Ma as a "Young Global Leader".
·
Fortune Magazine also selected him as
one of the "25 Most Powerful Businessperson in Asia" in 2005.
·
BusinessWeek also selected him as a "Businessperson of the Year"
in 2007.
·
In 2008, Barron's
featured him as one of the 30 "World’s Best CEOs"
·
In May 2009, Time magazine
listed Ma as one of the world’s 100 most powerful people. In reporting Ma’s
accomplishments, Adi Ignatius, former Time senior editor and
editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, noted that
"the Chinese Internet entrepreneur is soft-spoken and elf-like — and he
speaks really good English" and remarked that "Taobao.com, Mr. Ma's
consumer-auction website, conquered eBay in China." He was also included
in this list in 2014.
·
BusinessWeek chose him as one of China's Most Powerful People.
·
Forbes China also selected him as one of the Top 10 Most Respected
Entrepreneurs in China by in 2009. Ma received the 2009 CCTV Economic Person of
the Year: Business Leaders of the Decade Award.
·
In 2010, Ma was selected by Forbes
Asia as one of Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy for his contribution
to disaster relief and poverty.
·
In 2011 it was announced that one of
his companies had gained control of Alipay, formerly a subsidiary of Alibaba
Group, so as to "comply with Chinese law governing payment companies in
order to secure a license to continue operating Alipay.
·
Numerous analysts reported that Ma
sold Alipay to himself below market value without notifying the board of
Alibaba Group or the other major owners Yahoo and SoftBank,
while Ma stated that Alibaba Group's board of directors were aware of the
transaction. The ownership dispute was resolved by Alibaba Group, Yahoo! and
Softbank in July 2011.
·
Ma was awarded an honorary doctoral degree by the Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology in November 2013.
·
Ma is a board member of Japan’s SoftBank
and China’s Huayi Brothers Media Corporation. He became a trustee
of The Nature Conservancy’s China program in 2009 and joined its
global board of directors in April 2010.
·
In 2013, he became chairman of the
board for The Nature Conservancy's China Program; this was one day after he
stepped down from Alibaba as company CEO.
·
In 2014, he was ranked as the 30th
most powerful person in the world in an annual ranking published by Forbes.
·
In 2015, Asian Award honoured him
with the Entrepreneur of the Year award.
·
In 2017, Fortune ranked
Ma second on its World's 50 Greatest Leaders list.
·
In 2017, a KPMG survey
ranked Ma third in global tech innovation visionary survey.
·
In October 2017, Ma was given an
honorary degree of Doctor of Science in Technopreneurship from De La
Salle University Manila, Philippines.
·
In May 2018, Ma was given an honorary
degree of Doctor of Social Sciences honoris causa in recognition of his
contributions to technology, society and the world
No comments:
Post a Comment