Success of Entrepreneur (JACK MA)

MGT403: ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Assignment 01
Topic: Success of Entrepreneur (Jack Ma)

Submitted by:
Muhammad Awais Butt SP19-BAF-048
Nouman Rashid SP19-BAF-064
Zia ur Rahman SP19-BAF-071
Rohaan Rauf SP19-BAF-079
Sajjad Ali SP19-BAF-081
Sheikh M. Hassan Zafar SP19-BAF-083

Submitted to:
Ms. Shehla Zaman
Date of submission:
28th March, 2022
BAF-7B
DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES COMSATS
UNVERSITY, ISLAMABAD
Success of Entrepreneur (JACK MA)

Jack Ma
Jack Ma, originally Ma Yun, (born September 10, 1964, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province,
China), Chinese entrepreneur who was head of the Alibaba Group, which comprised several
of China’s most popular Web sites, including the business-to-business marketplace
Alibaba.com and the shopping site Taobao.com

Early life and education

Jack Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. He began studying English at a young age
by conversing with English-speakers at Hangzhou International Hotel. For nine years, Ma
would ride 27 km (17 miles) on his bicycle to give tourists tours of the area to practice his
English. He became pen pals with one of those foreigners, who nicknamed him "Jack"
because he found it hard to pronounce his Chinese name.

Later in his youth, Ma struggled attending college. Ma failed the entrance exam for the
Hangzhou Teachers College twice as his weak point was mathematics. The Chinese entrance
exams, held annually, took Ma three years to pass. Ma attended Hangzhou Teacher's Institute
(currently known as Hangzhou Normal University) and graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor of
Arts in English. While at school, Ma was head of the student council. After graduation, he
became a lecturer in English and international trade at Hangzhou Dianzi University. He also
claims to have applied ten times to Harvard Business School and got rejected each time.

Career
On a trip to the United States on behalf of the Hangzhou city government in 1995, Ma had his
first encounter with the Internet and saw the lack of Chinese Web sites as a great business
opportunity. On his return, he founded China Pages, which created Web sites for Chinese
businesses and was one of China’s first Internet companies. He left the company two years
later, however, partly because of strong competition from the communications company
Hangzhou Telecom, which had founded a rival company, Chinese page. From 1998 to 1999
Ma was head of an Internet company in Beijing that was backed by the Ministry of Foreign
Trade and Economic Cooperation. He felt, however, that if he remained with the government,
he would miss out on the economic opportunities that the Internet was bringing. Ma
persuaded his team at the ministry to go back to Hangzhou with him and found the Alibaba
Group, which launched a Web site that facilitated deals between small businesses. Ma was
convinced that the small-business-to-small-business Internet market had much greater
potential for growth than the business-to-consumer Internet market had. Small businesses
paid a membership fee to be certified as trustworthy sellers on Alibaba, with a greater fee
being charged to businesses that wished to sell to customers outside China. In order to instill
confidence in online sales, Alipay was created (2003) to act as a third party in transactions.
Growth of Alibaba was rapid. In 2005 it attracted the attention of the American Internet portal
Yahoo!, which bought a 40 percent stake, and in 2007 Alibaba.com raised $1.7 billion dollars
in its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong.

In 2003 Ma created a new company, the consumer-to-consumer online marketplace Taobao

(Chinese: “searching for treasure”). At the time, the American company eBay, in
collaboration with the Chinese company EachNet, had a market share of 80 percent, but Ma
felt that eBay-EachNet’s policy of charging users a transaction fee was a weakness. Taobao
did not charge such a fee but made money from online advertising and the sale of additional
Success of Entrepreneur (JACK MA)

services to users. Ma’s intuition proved correct; by 2007 Taobao had a 67 percent market
share, and eBay conceded majority ownership of its Chinese operations to the Chinese-
language media company TOM Group, which created the subsidiary TOM EachNet. In 2011
Ma announced that Taobao would split into three companies: Taobao Marketplace, where
individuals could buy and sell goods; Taobao Mall, an online shopping portal; and eTao, a
shopping-related search engine. In September 2014 the Alibaba Group debuted an IPO on the
New York Stock Exchange that raised $21.8 billion. That IPO was the largest ever in the
United States and gave the company a market value of $168 billion, the highest such value in
IPO history at that time for any Internet company. In September 2018 it was announced that
Ma would step down as chairman of Alibaba the following year, though he would remain on
the board.

Business
Following are the businesses of Jack Ma:

 Ali Baba Group

 Ant Group
 Taobao.com
 Alipay
 Aliexpress

Social Contribution
Following are some of the social contributions of Jack Ma:

 Founder of Jack Ma foundation, focuses on improving education and public health.

 In 2008 donated $808,000 to earthquake victims in China.
 Founder of Hong Kong Young Entrepreneur Foundation which help support young
entrepreneurs to grow their business.
 Alibaba and Jack Ma launched various initiative during covid where they donate
medical supplies to US and various countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.