Career position
The Good name of the co-founder and the executive director of the Alibaba Company is Jack Ma Yun.
Jack Ma who was a former English Teacher, established one of the largest ecommerce organisation of the world, Alibaba. In the September of 2014, Jack Ma’s company Alibaba had raised more than $25 Billion through an IPO offering in the NY stock exchange (Kim 2018). So far he have been playing the role of the Executive Chairman of the company and in September of 2018, Jack Ma resigned from that position. However, he would remain in that position for another 12 months for ensuring a smooth transition.
In his life, Jack Ma learned better from failures that he faced in his life than through conventional educational channels. In the primary school he failed 2 times, 3 times in the middle school and even in the college entrance test (Burns 2016). At the time he graduated, he had been rejected from companies also. After he started the Alibaba, he approached for venture capital funding in the Silicon Valley. However, his proposal was rejected because of approaching with an unprofitable business.
However, unlike other college dropout turned entrepreneurs, like Zuckerberg or Bill Gates of Steve Jobs, he building the brand in the early 2000s alongside pursuit of his MBA from the Cheung Kong University. His academic life was filled with struggle particularly in the early years at the primary school and the secondary school. He could not excel in the subjects that he were dispassionate about. However, his passion was restricted and objectified with the success of the Alibaba Company (Anwar 2017). He developed a zest for learning the English Language. After learning the basics, he attempted to polish his speaking power by working as a tour guide for the foreign tourists. Through interaction with these foreign tourists, he had developed a pen pal relationship with them and they were in fact from among the very first clients of his company.
His ability to question and re-examine situations helped him to perceive the situations from various perspectives. This allowed him to see opportunities in cases where all others would have seen problems only. Most entrepreneurs thought that opening an ecommerce business in China would be unpromising owing to the unreliability and unworthiness of the banking and payment system in the country (Choi 2017). However, Jack Ma had shown the courage to establish Alipay without the prior approval from the banking agencies of the country.
Jack Ma is one of the greatest examples of the entrepreneurship in the today’s world. Once he had been a poor lad who survived by acting as a tourist guide. His parents were involved in the profession of telling stories through music. He had an urge to learn English and since an early age he was involved in a continuous effort communicate in English in a better way (Dongwei 2016). His attempts to join universities by giving entrance tests also failed many times. However, he joined the Teacher’s training Institute in Hangzhou to accomplish a Bachelor’s degree in English and he graduated in 1988. He finally married his first love, Zhang Ying, whom he had met at the Teacher’s Training Institute. The family have a daughter and a son.
Career path
Jack Ma had a struggling life at his primary and secondary school where he failed approximately 5 times. Later he also struggled to gain admission to the university where he did not clear the entrance exam for admission to the college. The entrance exams in China are held annually and thus he took four years to pass the college level (Zhang et al. 2017). He was able to enter the teacher’s institute in Hangzhou and from there he finally graduated with a degree in English. At school he head the student’s council and after the completion of his education, he turned out to be a lecturer in English as well as Foreign trade at the University of Hangzhou Dianzi.
The distinct leadership traits of Jack Ma as a leader and a founder of Alibaba Company are as follows:
Alibaba founded by Jack Ma offered an opportunity to the individual entrepreneurs as well as small business customers to seek customers that suits their business domain. The decision came at a time when entrepreneurship in the ecommerce domain would have been considered as the worst plan for a start up in the country of China (Chiu et al. 2017). However, Jack Ma targeted the Chinese market initially. However, Ma’s business idea was innovative and was accepted in other business domains of China as well.
Jack Ma always believed that one good quality of a leader is that he should possess distinct foresight. He had the power to foresee the repercussions of the some of the decisions that seemed seemingly most insignificant. This was a key to the success of his business. As Sheikh, Shahzad and Ishaq (2017), informs, he was also able to start Alipay because of foresight that helped him to see prospect in the business which others undermined.
Positive as well as optimistic attitude is always an indispensable factor for the sustenance of the business in a cutthroat business environment. He always kept a low profile and rather than flaunting his own wealth, he emphasised on boasting about the growth of his organisation. As Saroj (2018), informs, the people who are working for Alibaba or the allied corporations, have a positive attitude coupled with a zest for industrious work. They know that these are the values that are mostly respected by Jack Ma.
Singles Day is celebrated with as much impetus in China as Valentine’s Day or any other occasion (Glowik 2017). Jack Ma thought that this could be the opportunity for the company to make business exclusively and kept cashing in over the decades.
Jack Ma realised that however hard he tried he always be encountering a group of employees or managers who would not be absolutely convinced with his business decisions. He accepted this difference pen heartedly and that rather than uniting the whole company under his self-goal, he launched a perception that all the stakeholders of the company should be united under a single vision.
Once Jack Ma was asked, what makes an employee different from one leader? His straightforward reply was that the leader was a person with a higher skill of technicality. As informed by Libert, Wind and Fenley (2014), Jack Ma emphasises on appointing those people who have focus on the enhancement of key skills and also have a comprehensive know-how for carrying forward the vision that he personally believed in.
Personal circumstances (family etc.)
Most of the people are unaware of the facts that state how many times a leader like Jack Ma have been rejected on his proposal or have been receiving disappointing results on his business affairs. Jack Ma had the power of endurance to hold on to his determination and with every rejection, he made himself more dedicated (Fan 2019). Many of his near ones had deceive him, but in the end he was able to start his own B2B business and most importantly he did this with the help of very few people who were with him, throughout his thick and thins.
- Jack Ma got to know about internet in the middle of 1990 and immediately started to see this technological drive as a great opportunity in business innovation.
- Ma visited the US frequently in the year 1995 and tended to learn about internet. He learned a lot about websites there and in the same year raised a capital of $20000 for starting his own business solely focusing on the internet.
- Initially his purpose was the creation of websites for the clients. Using his intellect, he was able to accumulate within 3 years only.
- The success of his business positioned him at the helm of a government led agency ‘China International Electronic Commerce Centre’(Turban et al. 2018)
- After that, in 1999, he created a website with other of his friends named Alibaba. His intension was to create a one stop business solution that is web based.
- The immense prospect of the company helped in gathering $25 million and that significantly contributed to the growth of the organisation.
- Next, Jack Ma attempted to venture in to ecommerce business and he saw that the business could stand apart to be a legendary business subsidiary in the 21st
- He also founded other famous firms like Taobao’, ‘Lynx’ and ‘Ali Mama’.
- The Central Television of China had mentioned as one among the 10 business leaders of the year which was compiled for the year 2004.
- He was given the designation, ‘The Businessperson of the Year’ from the end of the ‘Business Week’ magazine and his name was also featured in the list of 25 most business person of Asia
- The year 2009 have been extremely important in the life of Jack Ma. His name flashed in the list of 100 most influential business leaders of the world. He also received2009 CCTV Economic Person of the Year: Business Leader of the Decade Award (Hwang, Jung and Shin 2017).
- Forbes magazine also awarded him the position of 30thmost powerful man in the year 2014.
- The Asian Awards’ ceremony for the year 2015, felicitated him as the Entrepreneur of the year.
Jack Ma is soon to retire and following that he would be engaging highly in philanthropic activities. He has planned that he would be supporting millions of Chinese children to get access to education. He has planned to set up rural schools in the suburbs of China. He is emphasised a making the future sustainable for the next generation of the Chinese. Initially he has plans of working with 60 million children. He also pledges to the entrepreneurs and the corporate of Chinese mainland to donate towards the social issues of their respective native provinces (Sen, Ozturk and Vayvay 2016). He also have plans to set up technical schools where he can impart professional education that would enable the Chinese to get work in the technical sector. His aim is to get more Chinese people work in the organised sector of the country.
- Jack Ma’s Alibaba is taking the lead to courting the small businesses of US
- The company is also leading the way to change the way in which departmental stores do business
- The Hema Supermarket chain is going to throw the biggest threat to Walmart by 2030
- Alibaba would be surpassing Amazon in terms of business volume in 2020 (Liang et al. 2016).
- Starting on a shoe string, the business of Alibaba have achieved a phenomenal growth.
References
Anwar, S.T., 2017. Alibaba: Entrepreneurial growth and global expansion in B2B/B2C markets. Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 15(4), pp.366-389.
Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
Chiu, H., Fang, J., Hui, D., Ken, B., Rouleau, M.A. and Silverwood, R., 2017. Company Synopsis.
Choi, B., 2017. Corporate Strategy of Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent for Electric Vehicle (EV) Business. ??? ???, (31), pp.219-250.
Dongwei, S., 2016, January. Cross-border e-commerce helps SMEs reach global markets. In International Trade Forum (No. 2, p. 16). International Trade Centre.
Fan, Q., 2019. An Exploratory Study of Cross Border E-commerce (CBEC) in China: Opportunities and Challenges for Small to Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs). International Journal of E-Entrepreneurship and Innovation (IJEEI), 9(1), pp.23-29.
Glowik, M., 2017. 4.1 case study: Alibaba group. Global Strategy in the Service Industries: Dynamics, Analysis, Growth, 96.
Hwang, G.S., Jung, H.J. and Shin, C.S., 2017. The Effects of Business Startup Education of Restaurant Founder on Transfer Effect in Learning and Entrepreneurial Intentions. pp.167-170.
Kim, Y.C., 2018. Alibaba: Jack Ma’s Unique Growth Strategy and the Future of Its Global Development in the Chinese Digital Business Industry. In The Digitization of Business in China (pp. 219-247). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Liang, B., Tu, Y., Cline, T. and Ma, Z., 2016. China’s E-Tailing Blossom: A Case Study. In E-Retailing challenges and opportunities in the global marketplace (pp. 72-98). IGI Global.
Libert, B., Wind, Y. and Fenley, M., 2014. What Airbnb, Uber, and Alibaba have in common. Harvard business review, 11.
Saroj, S., 2018. Online Retailing in India: Present Situation and Future Growth Opportunities.
Sen, D., Ozturk, M. and Vayvay, O., 2016. An overview of big data for growth in SMEs. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 235, pp.159-167.
Sheikh, A.A., Shahzad, A. and Ishaq, A.K., 2017. The Growth of E-Marketing in Business-to-Business Industry and its Effect on the Performance of Businesses in Pakistan: Marketing Success. International and Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Sciences, 6(2), pp.178-214.
Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2018. Business-to-Business E-Commerce. In Electronic Commerce 2018 (pp. 123-166). Springer, Cham.
Zhang, W., Chen, M., An, W. and Zhang, J., 2017, July. The Key Success Factors in the Development of Platform-Based Business in China-Case Study on Alibaba and Jingdong. In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (pp. 185-193). Springer, Cham.
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