Jack Ma, the Chinese man with a friendly looking face, is the founder and executive chairman of the world’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba Group. His company deals with so many successful internet based businesses. He made a remarkable change in the China’s history of online businesses. Currently he’s an inspiration icon for many people out there in China. The reason is that his initial stages of life was full of failures from which he learned a lot and that made him what he’s today.
So I have collected some less known information and facts about Jack Ma that will motivate you to work harder to achieve your dreams and the info are as follows:
- Jack Ma is the first mainland Chinese Entrepreneur to appear on the front cover of the Forbes magazine.
- He’s the second richest of all in China and 18th richest person in the world with a net worth of $22.9 Billion.
- During his childhood, because of his passion towards learning English language, he used to guide the foreigners around his city in order to develop his English-speaking skills and like this he did that for 9 solid years.
- His name Jack was actually a nick name given by one of his foreigner friend who found it difficult to pronounce his Chinese name Ma Yun.
- Though he failed the university entrance exams thrice, he managed to attend Hangzhou Normal University and graduated in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in English.
- Since because of his passion towards English language, he even joined Hangzhou Dianzi University as a lecturer.
- When he was looking for jobs, he applied for 30 different companies and got rejected in every one of them. That was a very big failure for him at those times.
- He even went for the job with the police, but they said “You’re no good”.
- Jack once told in his interview “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 who got rejected.“
- By the way, he’s a business magnate by mind and philanthropist by heart.
- He bought his first computer at the age of 33.
- In April 1995, he and his wife collected $20,000 and started his first Internet company named “China Yellow Pages” which was dedicated to create websites for companies. Within 3 years span, his company had made 5,000,000 Chinese Yuan which was equivalent to US$800,000.
- Later he headed one China based IT company for a year but quited it soon with the thought of starting his own company.
- Then he founded Alibaba in his small apartment room with a group of 17 friends and the rest is History.
- When he approached people about Alipay, they said, “This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.” But he didn’t stopped there. He tried, tried, tried… and now he have 800 million people on Alipay. That’s a success.
This is how his life was full of failures at those initial stages. But he didn’t gave up. He worked hard day by day to achieve the success. His passion towards English language and Entrepreneurship made him what he’s today.
Also read “Jessica Cox – First Pilot With No Arms, Proving You Don’t Need ‘WINGS’ To Fly” and “Liz Murray – From Homeless To Harvard“.
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