Struggles of Jack Ma

 A ll of us have faced rejections, criticism, felt low and worthless at some point in time. We try to seek for motivation in the form of quotes or videos at some point of time and keep going on with our life, but we are not able to take the leap of faith. Let us go on a journey on this edition which can inspire you guys to the core and help you take the leap of faith. The story is of Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and one of the richest men in Asia.

Jack Ma was born on October 15, 1964, in Hangzhou. Ma was thin and bony and often started fights with classmates. "I was never afraid of opponents who were bigger than I," he recalls in "Alibaba," a book by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery. He was fond of collecting crickets and made them fight, and he gained the expertise to distinguish type of cricket by the noise it made.

Like many of us Jack Ma was without money or connections and only way to go ahead was through education. Jack Ma did the same. As he completed high school, he applied to go to college but could not enter as he failed the entrance exam twice. After lots of effort, he finally passed on the third try and attended Hangzhou Teachers Institute. He graduated in 1988 and like all of us started applying for jobs. Jack Ma applied for 30 different and distinct jobs but faced rejection each and every time. He also applied for the police and was told that he was not good enough. He went to KFC with 24 other people, everyone was selected except him. As per the world and society he was not good enough to join KFC and was the only one rejected. Finally, he was hired as an English teacher. Jack was a natural trainer and his students loved him and he also loved his job -- though he only made $12 a month at a local university. In 2016, Jack Ma revealed he was rejected 10 times from Harvard at the world Economic Forum. Jack had zero experience with computers and zero expertise in coding, but he was astonished by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the US in 1995. Jack searched "beer” for the first time on the internet but he was surprised to see that no Chinese beers popped up in the results. It was the time when he decided to start an internet company for China.

MOTIVATIONAL

Struggles of Jack Ma

I t is not like that the idea hit him and he became successful. His first two companies failed and then after four years he gathered 17 of his friends in his own apartment and con-vinced them to invest in his vision for an online marketplace he used to call "Alibaba." The site allowed exporters to sell through his website through product listings that customers could buy directly. Soon enough, the service started to attract members from all over the world. By October 1999, the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank, a Japanese telecom company that also invests in technology companies. The team remained closely linked and they are not organised. "We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up," Jack used to say to his employees.

In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba for 40% stake in the company. This was a huge suc-cess for Alibaba as it was trying to beat the china arm of eBay and it would eventu-ally be an enor-mous win for Ya-hoo too, getting a net value of $10 billion in Alibaba's IPO alone.

Jack told Bloomberg in an interview that he knew Alibaba had made it big when another cus-tomer offered to pay his restaurant bill. "I'm your customer of Alibaba group, I made a lot of money and I know you don't make any money," said the customer. "I'll pay the bill for you."

A s on 2020, Jack Ma’s total worth is 6560 crores US dollars. He started as a middle-class man like most of us and got lots and lots of rejection. But he never stopped and never doubted his abilities even when the whole world doubted on his abilities. So next time, you feel low or started doubting yourself whether you are good enough or not, think of Jack Ma. Just remember If the World cannot see your value in your current form that does not mean you are not valuable. You are like a balloon who is not inflated. Once you can inflate your balloon with attitude, it will be inflated and big and the world will see you as per your true value.

-Nilanjan Kala