Written by: Samip Aryal - 25014, Grade X
Posted on: 09 January, 2023
Jack Ma was born on September 10, 1964 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in China. He is the head of the Alibaba group which is a popular group in China which takes incharge of some of China's most popular websites. Some of these websites are alibaba.com and taobao.com. Jack Ma’s parents' are Ma Laifa and Cui Wencai. When he was a young boy he was interested in the English language and he used to guide tourists to Hangzhou.
He also failed the college entrance exam twice. He was weak in mathematics. In 1984 on his third attempt he finally passed and was admitted. He got his Bachelor’s degree in English in 1988 and from 1988 to 1993 he taught the English language and in 1994 he founded his first company. He named his company the Haibo Translation Agency. On the trip to the United States, he saw the huge use of the internet and noticed the lack of it in China. After returning home he founded the first Chinese internet company and soon he became the head of internet in Beijing. While working he found that it was not profitable to work for the government so he founded the Alibaba group. Later they made a website and gave support to smaller businesses as they thought it was more profitable then business-to-consumer websites. In the year of 2007 alibaba.com made 1.7 billion dollars after the acquisition of yahoo.com. In 2003 Jack Ma founded a new website called taobao.com and in 2011 Jack Ma announced that toabao.com will be separated into 3 companies where individuals could buy and sell goods, Taobao Mall - an online shopping platform and Etao - a shopping related search engine. In September 2014 the Alibaba Group created an IPO in New York and raised 21.8 billion dollars. That IPO was the biggest at that time in the United States and that boosted the company's market value to 168 billion dollars. In 2018 Jack stepped down as the Chairperson of Alibaba. During this time Jack Ma oversaw the ANT group.
ANT group looked after Alipay and other financial companies. In 2004 he was announced as one of the top 10 economic personalities of the year, in 2005 he was awarded for being an young global leader, in 2005 he was awarded as on of the 25 most powerful business people in Asia, in 2008 he was awarded as one of the 30 best CEO in the world, in 2020 Jack Ma received a award from King Abdullah II for fighting against covid-19 and he also got another award in the same year from the Pakistan president for fighting against covid-19, in 2017 Jack was ranked second for world’s 50 greatest leader’s list in 2015 he was awarded with the entrepreneur of the year award. Likewise he won a lot more awards and became one of China's best business leaders.
Reference:
Erik Gregersen, october 17,2011
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-Ma
