Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce ventures came into existence in 1999. It was founded by Jack Ma along with 17 others. Jack Ma was a Chinese who taught English. During one of his visits to the US, he learned about the growing internet market. He then decided to start one in his country.
While sitting in a cafe in San Francisco, he thought of the name Alibaba. Alibaba is a famous character from Thousand and One Nights. He asked the waitress if she knew Alibaba. The waitress nodded and said, ‘Open Sesame’. He asked the same to many others and none of them found it difficult to recognize the name. The name was easy to pronounce and globally known; therefore he chose it for his company.
Luck and time favoured Jack Ma. When he launched Alibaba’s online retail platform, the consumer internet boom had just arrived in China. The company made money from commissions on sales, fees for memberships, advertising and other services. When it needed technological assistance, Alibaba partnered with Yahoo. In 2016, Alibaba made a mark when the company crossed the revenue of its American counterparts such as Amazon and eBay. Two years later, Alibaba became the second Asian company to cross the $500 billion valuation mark.
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