In the tale "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," Ali Baba, a poor woodcutter, uses the magical phrase "Open, sesame" to gain access to the cave where the thieves have hidden their treasure. In a modern-day version of the story, Jack Ma, an entrepreneur who grew up in modest circumstances, also has a key to unlock riches. The difference, though, is that Ma is a real person and his portal to wealth isn't a cave but the Internet. Ma is founder, chairman and CEO of Alibaba.com, a China-based e-commerce company that has established a global reputation as a major player in bringing buyers and sellers together in cyberspace.
Ma, a former schoolteacher, and 17 colleagues launched the company in 1999 from an apartment in Hangzhou, which is south of Shanghai in eastern China. Since that time, Alibaba has grown into three online marketplaces serving the business-to-business, business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer segments. Alibaba has a solid reputation in China, where it is a household name and Ma is something of a business hero.
Faculty members at Wharton and other researchers and analysts around the world who follow Alibaba say the company has done an exemplary job at using its knowledge of China to grow its businesses there. The question is whether Ma, in the months and years to come, can expand his business in other countries while at the same time increasing his share of the intra-China B2B market being fueled by exploding domestic economic growth. Ma and his management team also are engaged in a showdown with global online auction leader eBay for preeminence in the large and growing C2C space in China, where there are an estimated 100 million Internet users.
Right now, Alibaba's sites display information about businesses and products that bring buyers and sellers together. In business jargon, Alibaba acts as an "aggregator" that serves as a go-between, according to Alberto Luiz Albertin, professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation's Business school in São Paulo, Brazil.
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