Teaching activity
Meet Jack Ma - From Poor English Teacher & KFC Reject to Asia's Richest Man
![](https://tutor2u-net.imgix.net/user-photos/host-jimriley.png?auto=compress%2Cformat&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=100&q=80&w=100)
4th February 2018
Meet Jack Ma, the former English teacher now the richest man in Asia!
This fascinating Bloomberg video profile tells the story of how Ma started as a poor child in China's countryside, learned English, got rejected from a job at KFC but then went on to found Alibaba, the world’s largest e-commerce site.
Alibaba was formed with $80,000 of investment. By 2000 the business had raised a further $25million of investment, despite having no formal business plan.
By 2014 Alibaba had listed its shares in New York, raising $25 billion - the world’s biggest flotation at the time.
Subsequently, Alibaba has adopted a strategy of diversification away from e-commerce, including buying a newspaper and investing in movie production, retailing and sports management.
Now the business is worth around $500 billion. Not a bad rate of return on that initial $80k investment.
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