Jack Ma, China’s quirky internet rock star, bows out
New chapter for China’s richest man as company he founded continues to shine
● Jack Ma was 31 when he was first introduced to the internet on a visit to the US west coast in 1995.
“I tried the internet in Seattle in a building called US Bank,” he told the World Economic Forum in Davos four years ago.
“My friend said, ‘Jack — this is the internet. Search whatever you want … just search it’.
“So I searched the word ‘beer’. I don’t know why, maybe because it was easy to spell. I see beers from Germany, the US and Japan, but there’s no beer from China, so I searched for the second word ‘China’, and there was no data, nothing.”
It was this unremarkable interaction that led Ma, a former English teacher, to launch his first internet venture — an online directory for the Chinese market — followed by an e-commerce platform that is now second in value only to Amazon.
Alibaba also owns an online payment system similar to PayPal, cloud computing services, the video-hosting website Youku Tudou, which is akin to YouTube, as well as a sizeable stake in Sina Weibo — China’s version of Twitter.
Alibaba’s influence in China is so big that it accounts for 80% of all online retail sales in the country, according to brokerage CLSA. In the 12 months to March, revenue was a staggering ¥376bn (about R775bn) and is set to hit ¥500bn for this financial year.
The company’s growth — from a start-up employing 17 of Ma’s friends in 1999 to a global behemoth with more than 100,000 staff — led to it shattering all records when it went public in 2014, raising $25bn (about R365bn now) on the NYSE and making it the biggest float in history.
It catapulted Ma, who has a 6% stake in Alibaba, to extraordinary wealth: Forbes estimates he is worth $38bn (although that is about a third of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s wealth).
The 54-year-old this week stepped down as executive chair, handing over to Alibaba chief Daniel Zhang, but remains a board director.
As Mark Zuckerberg is to Facebook, Bill Gates to Microsoft and Steve Jobs was to Apple, Ma is the embodiment of Alibaba and has become its public face thanks to his eccentric personality, which has aroused the curiosity of consumers and business leaders alike.
He has donned wigs and costumes to perform routines at company events, and has starred alongside Chinese action star Jet Li in a short kung-fu film.
Ma also wears his ignorance of tech as a badge of honour. Earlier this year, at the Viva Technology conference in Paris, he said: “I know nothing about technology, I know nothing about marketing, I know nothing about [the legal] stuff. I only know about people.”
His tenure hasn’t always been plain sailing. He drew criticism earlier this year for endorsing the prevailing culture at Chinese tech firms for staff to work long hours, calling “996” weeks — or working 9am to 9pm for six days a week — a “huge blessing” for young workers.
“Let me ask everyone, if you don’t put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?” he remarked in a post on Alibaba’s WeChat account.
Critics argued that his remarks would lead to overwork and decreased productivity among staff, and were problematic because a “996” schedule breaches Chinese labour laws that cap a working day at eight hours.
Duncan Clark, author of Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built, said that despite cutting back his workload, Ma is unlikely to be usurped as a symbol of Alibaba any time soon. “The private sector as a whole is in low-profile mode. Jack will retain his iconic role even in his new ‘retired’ mode.
“He’s also remaining active as an Alibaba partner and key shareholder in its finance affiliate, Ant Financial [which owns Alipay] and myriad of investment vehicles and assets,” he says.
“His English language abilities and especially his charisma assure him a continued voice in future on the global stage.”
Despite steering the Alibaba ship for the past 20 years, one thing is certain: Ma is positive about his retirement plans.
“I can never be as rich as Bill Gates, but one thing I can do better than him is retire earlier,” he told Bloomberg last year.
Daily Telegraph
One thing I can do better than Bill Gates is retire earlier