Diminutive Jack Ma speaks softly – yet colorfully – and carries a big stick as the founder of China’s most popular online store.
When he set up Alibaba, he saw a chance to connect China’s manufacturers to wholesale buyers around the world, fulfilling the ambition he formed as soon as he heard about the internet to get his country onto the web. What came later, with his Taobao marketplace and its signal victory over eBay, helped make Ma a tech and entrepreneurial icon.
Here are some of the landmark moments in Ma’s life that have taken him to where he is today – the chairman of an ecommerce titan that’s valued at over US$200 billion and the venerated godfather of tech in China.