Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, named Person of the Year
According to Forbes, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, China’s (and the world’s) biggest eCommerce company, is ranked No. 8 on the news outlet’s China Rich List. According to the Financial Times, an international publication that covers business, finance, economics and politics, Jack Ma is its Person of the Year for 2013.
Before Ma first founded Alibaba in 1999, he might not have expected to find himself on a Forbes’ list of any kind – or as the person of the year, for that matter. His bio on the Alibaba website says that he graduated from the Hangzhou Teacher's Institute with a major in English and other media outlets have said that he hadn’t touched a computer before 1995.
Regardless, Ma’s eCommerce giant outpaced sales for both Amazon and eBay combined and makes up about 2 percent of China’s gross domestic product. Furthermore, the Financial Times says that 70 percent of all Chinese deliveries are from Alibaba sales with 80 percent of all Chinese eCommerce coming from Alibaba’s collection of websites.
But Ma’s huge success with Alibaba isn’t the only reason that the Financial Times chose him as their person of the year. The editors there also attribute his selection to the environmental work that he’s been focused on since stepping down as Alibaba’s CEO this year.
“The most fun part of business, at least to me, is to contribute to the future,” Ma explained in an interview with Nature.org. “It's not just about making money — it's about making healthy money, enabling people to enjoy their lives. I think the important thing is to wake people up and let them know that our environmental issues need to be addressed. Positive thinking is key: The future is always beautiful.”
Speaking of the future, Alibaba is slated to have a bright one. In an article published by CNBC.com, Jonathan Lu, Alibaba’s new CEO, said that the company expects to triple its volume of transactions to $490 billion by 2016. Doing so would position it as the world’s biggest retail network, pushing Wal-Mart out of the coveted spot.
“Analysts have estimated it will raise $10 billion to $15 billion in its IPO that should happen in the first quarter of next year and value Alibaba at as much as $100 billion,” the CNBC.com editors explained. “That would make it the biggest IPO since Facebook's debut last year.”
Compared to past persons of the year, such as Barack Obama, Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, and Steve Jobs, Ma’s selection might also serve as an example of just how big the eCommerce industry has become in the past few years.
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