06/09/2021
Alibaba by Duncan Clark
4/5
At one point in time Alibaba was considered one of the most valuable companies in the world, second only to Google. Its market value was greater than Amazon and Ebay combined.
Alibaba was founded in 1999 by teacher turned entrepreneur Jack Ma. Alibaba also created its own payment platform Alipay to help facilitate the thousands of daily transactions under its businesses Tmall, Aliexpress and Taobao. Where users could buy a plethora of goods and even rent a fake girlfriend for the day.
Jack came from humble beginnings, as a kid he gave tours to foreigners visiting Hangzhou. He made a close connection to a group of Australian tourists (The Morley’s) who helped him learn English. This pushed Jack towards teaching English but, he had a vision for something more.
Jack started China Pages (an online directory) at a time when many Chinese haven’t even heard about the internet. This was later merged with a government entity and Jack stepped down to pursue his goals and created the E-commerce giant Alibaba.
Alibaba faced many struggles leading to its 2014 IPO. Such as strict government regulations, butting heads with global giants eBay for market share and dealing with sellers of fake goods. In the end Alibaba came out on top and Jack credited its success to mastering the Iron Triangle (E-commerce, Finance and Logistics.)
Although there is much controversy surrounding Alibaba today. I have no doubt that its stock price will rebound in the coming years due to their focus on rural markets, data management and cross border trade.
