Alibaba is one of the largest e-commerce company in the world with its three major e-commerce sites which is Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com. These sites engage about 10 million users daily which is still growing everyday.
Alibaba was founded by Jack Ma, who was previously a schoolteacher, in 1999. The founders hammered out Ma’s vision of a China-based e-commerce company that can deliver to the 730 million other users in other country on an efficient and timely basis.
There are 674 million active users for Alibaba each year while having 755 million mobile users. Thus, there is no doubt that Alibaba is a huge e-commerce success story that continues growing.
Alibaba Startup History
Alibaba (Alibaba Group Holding Limited), known as Alibaba Group or Alibaba.com is a Chinese multinational technology company in e-commerce. It was founded by Jack Ma on 28 June in 1999 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
As mentioned, Jack Ma was previously an English teacher who share the belief that the internet would level the playing field. Later, he started his own website that focuses on China commerce and some Chinese investors who share the same vision approached him.
He opened a company called China Pages and fortunately revenues picked up immediately which caused China Pages to value for $1 million within 3 years. After that, he came out with the idea of opening an e-commerce site and shared with his investors and partners.
With $35 million funding, they established Alibaba in the late 1999 which become a popular e-commerce site in the world.
Support Service
As a lot of users of Alibaba might know, Alibaba offers a good service which provides a good environment of mutual trust and positive experience for their customers and users. Service such as inspection, quality assurance and legal supports are provided to their customers.
It is to ensure their customer’s satisfactions and help the other sellers to maintain a positive interaction with their buyers. With their excellent support service, the both the buyer and seller are having good experience using their sites.
Supplier’s/Buyer’s Trust
Moreover, Alibaba also have their own strict rules which only allow seller on their e-commerce platform who pass the online certificate test to verify their identity either as a business or individual.
These rules can reduce illegal transactions as they supervise their users in their platform at all times. They will record all the transaction history so they will be able to trace down both the seller and buyer to protect the legitimacy of each transaction and help buyer to select reliable seller.
Never Give Up
Their founder, Jack Ma, was rejected a lot by others in his life. He failed at a key primary school test twice and three times in middle schools. That’s not all. He also got rejected by Harvard for 10 times.
After launching Alibaba, he also faces rejection when he tried to raise $5million in venture capitalist funding in 2001. Although he was rejected multiple times in his life, he didn’t give up but continued his path. Dedication is always the secret to success but it can be somehow hard for people to achieve.
Use Your Skills
According to Ma, he neither has any proficiency in technology nor marketing. He focuses on what he knows best – people. He spend time on his customers, people and his team rather than spending time on investments and competitors.
He save his energy on people he serve and provide the best service he can give. That is why Ma can provide good service and experience for their customers and users as they are customer oriented.
As Ma said “Don’t spend time on your investors. Don’t spend time on your competitors. When you look at the people, you want to serve. When you look at the people you work together, if they are happy, you will win. That’s the very simple.”
Think Differently
When he started Alibaba, he see a future others couldn’t give Ma a competitive edge. He searched the term “China” when he was first introduced to the internet during a trip to Seattle in 1995. So he decided to make something about China.
When no one else believe you, he will believe in himself and prove your self as that might be your chance to success. It proves that Ma was right and he proved himself through introducing Alibaba to the world.