...BUSINESS ENGLISH—M1 ------------------------------------------------- DR. BRAHIM BARHOUN IMRANI PRE-READING: http://www.inc.com/jack-ma/alibaba-jack-ma-reveals-his-global-strategy.html ALIBABA : THE EVERYTHING COMPANY In 1999, Trudy Dai used to spend all night sending e-mails from her friend Jack Ma’s apartment, trying to answer queries from American customers without letting on that she was Chinese. Ms Dai was one of the first dozen employees of Alibaba, an online listings service Mr. Ma, a teacher, had just started. It was already having some success connecting small Chinese manufacturers to potential customers, including the overseas ones Ms Dai was reassuring over e-mail. But the friends and students who made up the workforce were earning just 550 Yuan (then $66) a month. Mr. Ma, though, already had big dreams. That year he said: “Americans are strong at hardware and systems, but on information and software, all of our brains are just as good.” The company that started in Mr. Ma’s apartment now employs 24,000 workers at its headquarters in Hangzhou and elsewhere; Ms Dai is president of human resources. A few years ago Alibaba began to turn a profit; in the year to September 2012 it made $485m on revenues of $4.1 billion. Today, Alibaba is more than just the “Amazon of China”—it’s the Dropbox, PayPal...
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...Alibaba, Jack Ma, who took the business world by storm with the largest IPO, exceeding the amount of 20 Billion dollars (CNBC, 2014). Despite being born in an underprivileged family, Jack Ma’s strong will to achieve his goals lead him to become one of the richest man in the world. Jack Ma’s success story is an inspiration to young adults, as it reinforces that dedication and hard work is the key to success. Jack Ma was born on 15th October 1964, in Hangzhou, China. He grew up in communist China with two siblings and strict parents (Stone & D’onfro, 2014). According to an article in Business Insider, Jack Ma often got into fights while growing up and he was never afraid of his opponents (Stone & D’onfro, 2014). He grew up during China’s cultural revolution and did not have the privilege to learn English. However, as China was opening up to the West, he saw an opportunity to learn English from the tourists who were visiting China. Every morning Jack Ma rode his bike for Forty minutes to get to the nearest tourist spot, so that he could learn English from the foreigners in exchange for a city tour. His dedication to learn English paid off, when he finally became an English teacher, after being rejected from KFC and dozens of other jobs (Stone & D’onfro, 2014). Life after High school was not any easier for Jack Ma. He flunked twice in the entrance exam, but he had a strong will to attend college in order to become an English teacher. So, Jack Ma worked hard for...
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...accompanied her on the guitar. Their favorite location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets in the heart of the city’s African American community. Her older brother, Clarence left home in 1904 to join a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. “If Bessie had been old enough she would have gone with him,” Clarence’s widow, Maud, said. “That’s why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child.” 334 Clarence returned to Chattanooga in 1912 with the Stokes Troupe. He arranged for its managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher to give Bessie an audition. She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer, because the company also included the unknown singer, Ma Rainey. Bessie eventually moved on to performing in various chorus lines, making the 8"81" Theater in Atlanta her home base. She became its biggest star after signing with Columbia Records. She moved to Philadelphia in 1923, and began her recording career. There she met and fell in love with Jack Gee, a security guard. They married June 7, 1923, just as her first record was released. During the marriage, which was stormy with infidelity on both sides, Bessie became the highest paid black entertainer of the day, heading her own shows, which sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers, and touring in her own railroad car. Gee was impressed by the money, but never adjusted to show business life, or to Bessie’s bisexuality. In 1929, when she...
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...Case Study: Should Alibaba Group Centralize? Jack Ma founded the technologically evolving and economically progressing business, Alibaba Group. Ma saw the potential of the Internet early on and created a multifaceted conglomerate, capturing a business market at its foundation. His goal was to provide a simple, efficient e-commerce platform and now holds half of the B2B in China. Wherever there was a need, Ma would adapt and create different business units to effectively provide the service. Alongside online trading, Ma provided a platform for retailers, individuals, payment services, management solutions, and an entertainment portal. Alibaba Group developed synergies within the units and subsidiaries to coordinate ideas, spread resources, and develop additional units to complement each other. He down streamed manufacturers provided a cheap storefront and added value services (such as keyword bidding and commission based sales). His model was unlike any other at the time. This kind of consolidation, led to competition among the subsidiaries. This kind of competition, however, has inspired efficiency and differentiation. Ma promoted collaboration and created cross-business and cross-functional teams. The business units also did not depend on large teams but rather channeled its focus on engineering and customer service. By the mid 2000’s, China had transitioned into a primarily private economy—which ultimately brought the nation to an economic boom. By 2009, 70% of Alibaba...
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...ALIBABA Group Holding Brief History. Alibaba cooperation is a global wide Internet company founded by Jack Ma, Chinese name Ma Yun.Although Alibaba was founded in 1999, the story of how the company came to be actually dates back to 1995, when Jack Ma was on a trip to the U.S. and first became exposed to the Internet. As the story goes, he tried searching for the word "beer" on Yahoo but the search results did not turn up a single Chinese option. In fact, he could hardly find anything about China on the Internet at all. After returning home, he founded a company called China Pages - a directory of various Chinese companies looking for customers abroad. China Pages was a flop. But a few years later, Ma took another stab at an Internet business. With a group of 17 friends and $60,000 of funds, Alibaba was born. [Baidupedia Web] Within only 15 years, Alibaba became the largest e-commerce company in the world, with approximately $300 billion in annual gross merchandise volume ("GMV") - or nearly 1.5 times the combined GMV of Amazon and eBay. In fact, more than three out of every four dollars spent online shopping in China goes through its platform, which should come as no surprise given that Alibaba's user base is nearly equal to the entire population of the U.S. Alibaba's "ecosystem" is made up of three leading Chinese online retailing platforms: (1) Taobao.com, China's largest online C2C shopping site; (2) Tmall.com, China's largest third-party...
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.... 6 6. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS........................................................ 7 7. SWOT ANALYSIS ................................................................ 10 1 1. Introduction 1.1. Alibaba Group Alibaba (SEHK: 1688) (Chinese: 阿 里 巴 巴 ; pinyin: ā lǐ bā bā) is a Hangzhou-based e-commerce/e-auction company, specializing in global trading. It was founded in 1999 by Ma Yun (Jack Ma), and operates five e-commerce sub-companies which operate different aspects of trading. 1.2. Business profile The English-language web site alibaba.com specializes in business-to-business trades, especially for international buyers trying to contact Chinese sellers. The Chinese-language web site china.alibaba.com focuses on business-to-business trades within China, while www.taobao.com is a consumer-to-consumer trade site for Chinese customers. The Japanese language website "Japan.alibaba.com" is for Japanese customers. Alibaba Group Type e-commerce Founded Hangzhou, China (1999) 6/F Chuangye Mansion, East Software Park, Headquarters No.99 Huaxing Road, Hangzhou, 310099, China Key people Ma Yun (Jack Ma) Industry Internet Employees 4,400 (30 June 2007) Website http://www.alibaba.com Japan's Softbank was one of the earliest investors in Alibaba. Its founder, Masayoshi Son, invested $18 million in the company in 2000 and also participated in subsequent rounds of financing. . 1.3....
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...Alibaba Group is a Hangzhou-based e-commerce/e-auction company, specializing in global trading. It was founded in 1999 by Ma Yun (Jack Ma), and operates five e-commerce sub-companies which operate different aspects of trading. Employees 4,400 (June 30,2007). As of January 2009, the Alibaba Group is made up of 6 sub-companies: 1. Taobao.com: Online auctions web site for customers. 2. Alipay: Online payments web site, processing mainly payments within China. 3. Alisoft: Provider of web services to the Chinese Small and Medium-sized Enterprise market place. 4. Alimama: Online advertising exchange, which allows web publishers and advertisers to trade online advertising inventory. 5. China Yahoo ! As a powerful portal with excellent searching engine, it provides high- quality basic application services for internet users including email, IM, information services and so on. 6. Koubei.com: China's largest communities for exchanging basic life information such as that on clothes, food, housing and travel. In 2009, Alibaba Group employed nearly 17,000 people, 70% worked in Alibaba’s B2B business. CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS 1. Clear Strategy To be the best e-business website not only in China, but also all over the world is the mission of Alibaba Corporation. The clear strategy is the beginning of the team of Ma Yun and the highest demand of all the team members. The right strategy born with the right period of e-business development in...
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...Ma was born in Zhejiang Province, China, in 1946. Ma taught himself English and graduated from Hangzhou Teacher's institute in 1988. Jack Ma is the CEO of Alibaba Group, the Chinese leader in e-commerce with counts five companies specialized in online shopping as Tabao.com, the second global site behind eBay and Yahoo China, the search engine and portal bought by Yahoo in 2005. In his younger years, Jack Ma was a tour guide; his excellent command of English and his perfect knowledge of the province of Hangzhou where he comes from allow him to be really good in this job. Graduated from Hangzhou Teachers' Institute in 1988, Jack Ma taught for some time before creating a translation agency that knows a big success thanks to U.S. and foreign companies who move in China. During a trip he made in the USA as an interpreter, Jack Ma discovers computers and internet. Fascinated, he ordered to a friend a website for his translation agency. Back in China, he borrowed $ 2,000 from friends and launched the website China pages, considered as the first commercial website in the country. The site has difficulties to find its business model and stops. Jack Ma got a job at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, a position which enabled him in 1998 to meet Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo. Jack Ma really wants to invest in the web. He managed to borrow $ 60,000 for the launch of Alibaba.com in 1999. Quickly, the company is a leader in the sector of business-to-business (B2B). The credibility...
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...provides business to customer and customer-to-customer sales and services via online. Electronic payments, cloud-computing services that are data centric and search engines for shopping are also included in Alibaba’s services. Jack Ma is a very successful person that brings up the whole company with Penh Lei, also known as founders of the company. Being an English teacher, which is lacked in computer knowledge, Jack Ma made up for this weakness with his vision. Jack and 17 of his friends launched Alibaba in 1999. By right, Alibaba Group is more successful than eBay and Amazon when put together. Srikanth An. (2015, June 25).Jack Ma- The Inspirational Story of Alibaba Founder. Retrieved from http://www.shoutmeloud.com/jack-ma-alibaba-founder.html In 2012, two thresholds of Ali Baba Group handled sales of almost $170 billion. Though the company was started in the year 1999, the group started earning profits only from the year 2001. Jack Ma was CEO of the group till 2013. Lacking the technical knowledge, Jack was never a typical CEO. Jack is the main pillar of Alibaba who presently acting as the chairman of the group. But the present CEO is Jonathan Lu. In September 2014, Alibaba’s first IPO took the US markets by storm. It boosted founder Jack Ma to become China’s Richest Man. Over 231 million customers spent a figure of $248 billion on Alibaba’s web portals in 2013. This is much more greater sales than eBay and Amazon when combined. Jonathan Lu, the CEO of Alibaba was quoted...
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...Milestone Alibaba’s 18 founders first gathered in Jack Ma’s Lakeside Gardens apartment in Hangzhou in 1999 and founded Alibaba.com. The founders and management would go on to launch a number of Alibaba’s core businesses from that apartment, including Alibaba.com.cn (now known as 1688.com), Taobao Marketplace and Alimama, meeting in the same spirit of partnership and with the same goal: to make it easy to do business anywhere. Jack Ma began operations in 1999 with Alibaba.com, an English-language marketplace for global trade. They founded Alibaba.com to help small exporters engaged in manufacturing and trading, primarily located in China, to reach global buyers. In 1999, they also launched a Chinese-language wholesale marketplace for domestic China trade among small businesses, now called 1688.com. This domestic platform has since evolved into a wholesale channel for merchants doing business on our retail marketplaces to source products. In 2003, Alibaba established Taobao Marketplace as a free platform for buyers to explore and discover products and for sellers to establish a low-cost online presence. According to iResearch, Taobao Marketplace was the number one consumer-to-consumer, or C2C, marketplace in terms of gross merchandise volume in China in 2013. In 2004, Alibaba established Alipay to address the issue of trust between buyers and sellers online. Buyers were unwilling to effect payment before receiving and inspecting their purchases, and sellers were unwilling to...
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...Traded as | NYSE: BABA | Founded | 4 April 1999; 17 years ago Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China | Headquarters | Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China | Area served | Worldwide | Founder(s) | Jack Ma | Key people | * Jack Ma (Chairman) * Daniel Zhang (CEO) * Joseph Tsai (Executive vice-chairman) | Industry | Internet | Products | E-commerce, Online auction hosting, Online money transfers, mobile commerce | Services | Online shopping | Revenue | CN¥76.204 billion (2015)[1] | Operating income | CN¥22.716 billion (2015)[1] | Net income | CN¥24.261 billion (2015)[1] | Total assets | CN¥255.434 billion (2015)[1] | Total equity | CN¥146.097 billion (2015)[1] | Employees | 34,985 (March 2015)[2] | Subsidiaries | Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao F.C., Taobao, Tmall,UCWeb, AliExpress | Slogan(s) | Global Trade Starts Here | Website | alibabagroup.com | Alibaba Group | Simplified Chinese | 阿里巴巴集团 | Traditional Chinese | 阿里巴巴集團 | [show]Transcriptions | | Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese e-commerce company that providesconsumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services viaweb portals. It also provides electronic payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. The group began in 1999 when Jack Ma founded the website Alibaba.com, a business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. In...
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...hand-in-hand. Every year we change 'the organizational structure in tandem with changes in strategy. Jack Ma, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group, stared through the fog at the cable stays of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge whistling past on his drive to the offices of Taobao ("hunting for treasures"), Alibaba's online marketplace for Chinese retailers and consumers. The longest transoceanic bridge in the world had a long gestation period: the feasibility studies took a decade. and even after their approval the plans changed to connect the northern end of the bridge to Jiaxing, rather than the Jinshan suburb of Shanghai as initially planned. When the bridge was opened to the public just over a year earlier, in May 2008, it cut the trip between the cities of Ningbo and Shanghai and southern Jiangsu province from 400 kilometers (km, equivalent to 249 miles) to just 80 km (50 miles), boosting economic integration and development in the Yangtze River Delta, which was home to 72.40 million people living in almost 100,000 square km of land comprising Shanghai, Zhejiang province, and Jiangsu province.? Ma couldn't help but smile to himself as he thought of the obvious similarities between the Hangzhou Bay Bridge and the Alibaba Group of companies. Just as the proposed bridge changed form as its plans progressed, the Alibaba Group evolved over an equally long period from its founding by Ma and a small group of friends in 1998, to the point where it now captured approximately one half of business-to-business...
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...Ankit Singh and Juan Alberto Calero Part A – e-Commerce in China vs USA 1. Overall, what are some key opportunities and challenges (obstacles) that confront ecommerce in China? How are these challenges similar / different from those confronting e-commerce in the US (or other countries that you are more familiar with)? Some of the key opportunities of e-commerce in China are: The internet penetration rate in China is growing at a much faster rate as compared to other countries. 25.5% users in China have engaged in e-commerce, while in US 71% has done so. This represents an enormous opportunity for e-commerce services, given that there is room for growth in China. The market is China is still in the beginning of its growth stage. The manufacturing prowess of china provides an excellent complement to the ecommerce market. Online shopping market has grown 64.1% over last year to $1.5 Billion. Online B2B market is valued at 65.7 B 69.8% yearly growth. With these accelerated growth rates, the e-commerce market will developed very quickly, players need to be aware of the stage of e-commerce in China and address the market accordignly. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) contribute to 68.8% of nation gross industrial output. Only 28% of SMEs utilised third-party B2B e-commerce platform. The government has a plan to increase it to 80% by 2012. Given this, the projected demand for e-commerce is known. In addition , players also known which type of businesses are using e-commerce...
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...COMPANY NOTE Initiating Coverage 27 October 2014 CHN | Technology | Internet BUY Price target $118.00 Price $95.76 The Powerful E-Commerce Ecosystem Connecting Half of China; Initiate at Buy Key Takeaway China's changing Internet user demographics and mobile development support our favorable view on e-Commerce for the next decade. Alibaba is the largest Chinese ecommerce player, with 80%+ GMV market share, but is only selling to less than 25% of the population now. We estimate well over half of Chinese population will be shopping on Alibaba’s platforms in 10 years. Initiate with Buy; PT USD118. Changing demographics & mobile support ecommerce in the next decade. As discussed in our sector note, "A Taste of Domestic Consumption: The Unleashing of China's E-Commerce Power" published on Sept 19, 2014, China’s e-Commerce growth for the next decade benefit from: 1) changing Internet user demographics towards 30+ year old age groups; 2) accelerating structural shift to online from traditional retail; 3) Chinese government’s massive support for urbanization and domestic consumption; 4) proliferation of affordable smart devices; 5) improving wireless and transport infrastructures in lower tier and rural markets, and 6) rising consumer demand for better quality, design & fashion, authenticity and timely delivery. Growth driven by mix shift towards Tmall, and improving mobile monetization. We expect Alibaba, as the largest e-Commerce player, to sell to...
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...What will he do with this information? A DOZEN big screens hang on the wall. Maps flash. Numbers stream by. The Alibaba Group’s “live data monitoring room” offers a snapshot of frantic activity: Chinese firms trading with foreign ones; Chinese individuals buying clothes from each other. Perhaps half a billion people use Alibaba’s various online services. The group’s diminutive founder, Jack Ma, smiles that business is “pretty good”. Yet he is far from satisfied. In a country where tycoons are often the children of politicians, Mr Ma stands out. He failed twice to get into college. He learned English from the radio. He stumbled on the internet during a trip to America as an interpreter in the mid-1990s. He typed the phrase “Chinese beer” into a search engine. No results appeared. He saw an opportunity. He started Alibaba in 1999, to help small firms find customers and suppliers without going through costly middlemen. Alibaba.com now claims to have 57m users, including some in nearly every country. It is sometimes likened to eBay, but is more like an online Yellow Pages. Related topics * China * Science and technology * Internet * E-commerce * Business Another venture, Taobao.com, sells to consumers. It has 300m customers and shifted $29 billion-worth of goods in 2009. It is like a scrappy cross between Amazon and eBay: it operates an online mall where vetted sellers can hawk their wares, and a site where anyone with a Chinese identity...
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