JACK MA | A very inspiring message from a very successful person on earth

On 4 April 1999, Jack Ma and his team of 17 friends and students founded Alibaba.com, a China-based B2B marketplace site, in his Hangzhou apartment. In October 1999, Alibaba received a US$25 million investment from Goldman Sachs and SoftBank. Alibaba.com was expected to improve the domestic e-commerce market and perfect an E-Commerce platform for Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to help export Chinese products to the global market as well as address World Trade Organization (WTO) challenges. In 2002, Alibaba.com became profitable three years after launch. Ma wanted to improve the global e-commerce system, so from 2003 onward, Alibaba launched Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Alimama.com, and Lynx.

When eBay announced its expansion into China in 2003, Ma viewed the American company as a foreign competitor and rejected eBay's buyout of Alibaba's subsidiary Taobao. Through applying existing technologies and gaining trust in the Chinese e-commerce market, as well as expanding through dominating the market at a loss before making a return on additional services, Alibaba's subsidiaries outperformed eBay in the Chinese e-commerce market, claiming a growing percentage of consumers from eBay. Alibaba subsidiary Taobao would later force eBay out of the Chinese market, with eBay closing its unprofitable China Web unit, though the two companies would break even six years later.

In 2005, Yahoo! invested in Alibaba through a variable interest entity (VIE) structure, buying a 40% stake in the company for US$1 billion. This would as a result net in US$10 billion in Alibaba's IPO alone to Yahoo!.

According to Li Chuan, a senior executive at Alibaba, the company was planning in 2013 to open traditional brick and mortar retail outlets in partnership with Chinese real estate company Wanda Group.

Additionally, Alibaba purchased a 25% stake in Hong Kong-listed Chinese department store chain Intime Retail in early 2014. In early 2017, Alibaba and Intime's founder Shen Guojun agreed to pay as much as HK$19.8 billion (US$2.6 billion) to take the store chain private. Alibaba's stake—28% from 2014's US$692 million investment—would rise to about 74% after the deal.

In April 2014, Alibaba, Coatue Management, and Andreessen Horowitz led a US$250 million Series D financing round that was completed by on-demand transportation company Lyft, bringing its total amount raised to $332.5 million. On 5 June 2014, Alibaba bought a 50% stake of Guangzhou Evergrande F.C. from Evergrande Real Estate Group Ltd. in a deal that was worth 1.2 billion yuan (US$192 million). On 5 September 2014, the group—in a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission—set a US$60- to $66- per-share price range for its scheduled initial public offering (IPO), the final price of which would be determined after an international roadshow to gauge the investor interest in Alibaba shares to shareholders. On 18 September 2014, Alibaba's IPO priced at US$68, raising US$21.8 billion for the company and investors. Alibaba was the biggest US IPO in history, bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's shares (BABA) began trading on the NYSE at an opening price of $92.70 at 11:55 am EST. On 22 September 2014, Alibaba's underwriters announced their confirmation that they had exercised a greenshoe option to sell 15% more shares than originally planned, boosting the total amount of the IPO to $25 billion.

In January 2017, Alibaba and the International Olympic Committee jointly announced an $800 million deal that would last till 2028 in where the company would sponsor the Olympic Games. In September 2018, Jack Ma, the main founder of Alibaba, announced that he would step down as chairman in a year's time so he could focus on philanthropy.

In response to the announcement, The Economist stated that Ma had a significant impact in China and worldwide via contributions and dedication to various businesses.

In May 2019, Bloomberg cited sources familiar with the matter as saying that Alibaba was considering raising $20 billion through a second listing in Hong Kong.On Tuesday, 10 September 2019, Jack Ma officially stepped down as the chairman of Alibaba, Daniel Zhang succeeded him at the head of the company. In September 2019, the municipal government of Hangzhou announced that it was boosting its monitoring of the private sector by embedding government officials in Alibaba and other companies.











#JackMa #InspiringMessage #DecissionMaking #Alibaba