Jack Ma ( In Chinese: 马云, Ma Yun ) who is the co-founder and executive chairman of
Alibaba, would be retiring from his job responsibilities tomorrow i.e. 10th September 2018
to focus on philanthropy in education, as per the New York Times.
Name game:
He worked as a tour guide after US President Nixon visited Hangzhou which led to tourism
industry boom in his birthplace. He was born on 15th October 1964. His real name was a
little hard to pronounce as per his American befriend who named him ‘Jack’, hence this
name. Later it was because of this American friendship, he visited the US and witnessed
the World Wide Web for the first time back in 1995, which led to his first business venture.
How Beer kick-started his online carrier:
The first thing that Jack Ma searched on the internet was “beer”. The search result returned
no website related to China. He saw great opportunities on the Internet. He started
‘Chinapage’. It was a business listing site. This led to inquiries from China’s investors but
bureaucracy and red-tapism led Jack Ma’s departure from the company. However, as
Sandeep Maheshwari says, “Success comes from experience, and experience comes from
bad experience”. This led to Jack Ma’s meeting with Yahoo co-founder, Jerry Yang and guess
what, Jack Ma was working as a government servant in China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade
and Economic Cooperation. It was in 1999 that Jack Ma started Alibaba leaving his
government job.
From jobless to employing more than 66,000 employees:
Jack Ma applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected by all. “I went for a job with the
police; they said, ‘you’re no good,'” Ma told interviewer Charlie Rose. “I even went to KFC
when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted.
I was the only guy…”. In addition to this, he applied ten times to Harvard Business School
(HBS) and got rejected.
Today as per statistics Alibaba employs more than 66,000 employees in 2018.
Name game of ‘Alibaba’ :
So you might have heard about ‘Alibaba and foutry thieves’ and also remember “khul ja
sim sim” in English its “Open Sesame”. Ma sat in a coffee shop at San Francisco
brainstorming company’s name. Ma, being an English teacher, knew about ‘One thousand
one nights’, a collection of Arabic stories.
He asked the waitress whether she knew anything about Alibaba?
She replied “Open Sesame?”.
Next Ma went on to the street and asked randomly about Alibaba and everyone knew about it.
He also said that Alibaba, would ‘open sesame’ for SMEs in China. This name also meant
that people all around the world would recall his brand name.
Current fortunes:
As per Forbes as on September 9, 2018, real-time Net Worth of Jack Ma is whooping $36.6
Billion or 3660 crore rupees. Alibaba’s IPO in New York set a world record of being the
world’s biggest public offering after which Ma commented that he has not received money
but has got the trust of people.
In 2013 Ma stepped down as CEO of Alibaba and now would work for education.
Jack Ma founded Jack Ma foundation in 2014 and is inspired by great Bill Gates. He said he
cannot be as rick as Gates but can retire as early as gates.
He is a celebrity in China and people turn in numbers to listen to him. Some claim that he
is positioned along with the Chinese wealth god.
From a teacher to richest teacher, VoxyTalksy would like to wish him best of luck for his
philanthropic venture.
