Last week China was held in a conference on strategies for search engines (Search Engine Strategies Conference – SES China). And from what I read, all the tension and the media debate centered on the speeches of the CEO of Yahoo China and founder of B2B e-commerce portal Alibaba, Jack Ma and President of Google China Johnny Chou. Interesting. The news we received on this event encouraged me to write some lines about Jack Ma and Alibaba.
Not if you’ve heard of him, but Jack Ma is now one of the most illustrious figures of global electronic commerce, is also the father of internet in China and is the richest man in China. His short and successful history as an entrepreneur is covered with glory and cyber digital admiration. Amazing to see how out of nowhere, through their own effort and good luck to where it was tragicomic. Born in a lower class family in eastern China and raised with her two brothers. At thirteen, he had to start working. It was a tour guide, teacher and interpreter of English before starting e-commerce in 1995.
Ma conceived the idea of creating special Chinese e-commerce portal Alibaba.com, by chance. It had to travel to the U.S. to collect a debt that was an entrepreneur with his boss, but this person not only refused to pay, but kept him hostage for two days. The hijacker forced him to promise that he would create an Internet company in China, despite not having any knowledge. Before returning home, he traveled to Seattle and called some friends who will teach the basics and back to Hangzhou received a loan of two thousand dollars and founded China Pages. This was in 1995.
Later he worked for the Ministry of Investment and Trade outsiders (the almighty MOFTEC) and in 1999 founded the B2B e-commerce company Alibaba, a company that started with a capital of $ 60,000 and 40 employees.
The end of this story is known around the world: Yahoo! Looking for stability in this tremendous market merged with Alibaba also provide the critical mass provided the necessary management to settle in that country and Alibaba found in Yahoo! His partner and financial technology required to develop new markets, vertical markets and improve their B2B marketplace with better search functions.
Yahoo – Alibaba has 15 million registered members, 120 million small and medium enterprises (SME) users in 200 countries. The Chinese market has a million users and shows an exponential growth.
There are 25 million SMEs, of which only 600 000 have a presence online. The pie is huge. B2C level, the expectations are very interesting: The B2C e-commerce soars in China.
The value proposition is to give the oportundad Alibaba to industrial SMEs, handicraft and services to do business with Chinese companies worldwide. Alibaba eliminated all types of intermediation by creating value and minimizing prices for producers.
What is the competitive position of Alibaba on eBay? At the conference, Jack Ma said that eBay is a shark in the Pacific Ocean instead Alibaba is a crocodile in the Yangtze River. He said that in this kind of competition among those who died and faced the other survives. So do not even step to face global eBay, but eBay also has moved into China. Something similar occurs with Google and Baidu.
A few months ago, Jack Ma said countrysides sites are B2B e-commerce such as whales, but 85% of existing fish is the size of the shrimp. I do not know anyone that make money for the whales but I have seen many making money from the shrimp: Alibaba receives daily visits from a million and half of shrimp. In troubled waters fishermen gain.