In India, Chinese companies and its products are not really famous, they are actually notoriously known as “china maal” hence when I say that am going to praise a Chinese company in this review, please do not get startled, you should just do a Google search for Alibaba and see what appears, or better, go to the wiki page of the company and glance thru it. Its a giant, or how the Chinese would put it, its a dragon!
This book has been written by an ex-employee who joined alibaba in the very very early stage when it was just a zero profit making company and was still operating from an apartment. Porter (the author) was the VP of Public Relations when he left Alibaba in 2008. He takes us thru the life of this company, its struggle, its competitors (this is the most juiciest part of the book), its expansion, its Yahoo connection and ultimately its global dominance!
Jack Ma, the founder of the alibaba group of dragons errr I mean companies is a simple English teacher and he dreamed of getting buyers and sellers together in the easiest way possible when the internet started to become big in the late 90’s. In 2014 when it went public, its valuation stood over $230 Billion! Wouldn’t you like to read everything about such an awesome success story. I would! During these years Jack Ma learnt how to do public speaking (ya, starting from this stage) to how to handle competition and then how to handle such an large organisation.
His initial aim was to solve a problem and after a few years think about avenues to make money. Taobao (an Alibaba company) made ebay run away from China, quite literally and the entire story is described pretty well in this book. They dream of kicking ebay out of china when they were 3 people working out of an apartment as if it was just a small project. Talk about audacity of a plan! 🙂
Just like Alibaba and chalis chor, this book also ends with 40 lessons. Amazing and inspirational lessons that Porter has pulled out with his learning from Alibaba. To quote a few – free is also a business model, build a company for 80 years timeline, learn from competition, do not copy them and many more.
Its a must have must read book. Go get it.
Bonus – Jack Ma’s advice to young people – again a must watch! (Its in English)