Alibaba blows out twenty candles: in 1999, Jack Ma started building his way to the top from his apartment. How did the journey from thirsty teacher to universal stardom go? And as Ma steps down, what is still in store for Alibaba?
19 people in an apartment
The ‘rags to riches’ story is remarkable: in its fifteenth year, Alibaba achieved the biggest IPO in history. Just four years later, the company has made it into the world’s most valuable companies as its turnover climbed 51 % to 376.8 billion yuan (49 billion euros). Ma’s online empire is now one of the major players in the global retail sector – and beyond. His major rivals? Tencent at home and Amazon on the other side of the ocean.
The founder has painted a picture from his beginning that is as humble as that of his American examples Amazon and Apple, but he did not hide his ambitions even at the very start. His company was aimed to bring Chinese companies to the Internet – not only to the Chinese online market, but all over the world – and in that way become one of the world’s ten most visited websites. With a team of 18 employees the former English teacher worked night and day for a year to get his platform started: all spent night and day eating, working and sleeping in his apartment. The reward is not only for him, but for his home town as well: Hangzhou is now one of China’s main centres for technology.
An empire that has it all
Ma boasts about his long term vision and his ability to dream, rather than being limited by the next quarterly results. In this way, he has been able to build a huge empire in the last twenty years: Alibaba has put its claws in e-commerce (Taobao and Tmall), payment systems (AliPay), logistics (Cainiao) and even physical stores (the Hema chain and the brand new AliExpress stores).
Just as it is the case with Amazon, Alibaba is based on a technological and all-knowing ecosystem that wants to follow the consumers in each step they take. Based on e-commerce, the system is fuelled by Big Data, the Internet of Things and Artificial intelligence to arm itself for a further conquest of retail country. In 2016, the company launched its “new retail” strategy, going a lot further than Western companies’ omnichannel experience. Alibaba is working on digitised physical stores that are armed with mobile payment, home deliveries, facial recognition and much more. The state-of-the-art Hema supermarkets (not affiliated with the Dutch chain of the same name) are just the start.
Alibaba knows everyone in China
Alibaba is not only blurring the lines between online and offline, but also between retail and service, shopping and entertainment, social media and marketing. All of those come together in the annual 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, that wants to lure in Chinese customers in its 48 hour duration using spectacular TV shows, ‘multiplayer’ online shopping with friends and smartphone games with augmented reality.
As the company know every Chinese citizen through these projects, it can use that intelligence to customise its production and logistics. Moreover, Ma’s company uses the same systems to be the best possible partner for retailers (efficiency), consumers (unique experiences) and a broader sector in general (as supplier of data and technology).
Outside retail
It does not end just there, as Ma says he wants to keep on dreaming and innovating, no matter in which business Alibaba will find itselfin the future. The Chinese holding is broadening its scope, investing in electronics producer Haier, video streaming service DisneyLife, self-driving cars and the newspaper South China Morning Post. For Alibaba, retail was just the beginning…
However, the future expansion will happen without its founder at the helm, because at this double anniversary (Alibaba turns 20, Ma 55) China’s richest man steps down as CEO to apply himself more to charity and his rekindled love for teaching. Or would the step back be more of a precaution as the Chinese government is starting to think Ma is beginning to fly too close to the sun, as CNN suggests?
