Chobani's Secret to Making Customers Feel Like Family

Hamdi was disappointed that Americans were happily eating sugar-filled yogurt. He wanted a better product and brought his friend Mustafa from Turkey to the U.S. to work on perfecting the recipe for Chobani. It hit retail shelves 18 months later. To this day, Mustafa is the yogurt master of Chobani.

Hamdi pushed the product to mass retailers, wanting to give everyone access to it. By 2012, Chobani had a factory in Australia and was in the midst of building a production facility in Idaho. They were planning for new products and new packaging, testing ways to be available to people with allergies and planning to enter new markets across the globe.

Few companies as large as Chobani live their brand, but even mom and pop shops can learn something from this company.

1. Create a family culture at work. This is a top priority for Hamdi. Chobani’s offices feel like home. All of them have open-air layouts and room for collaboration, including a long kitchen table for eating together. The comfortable space and ability to collaborate gives them an incentive to be there.

Chobani hires talent for a culture-fit. Stressing work/life balance and a flexible work environment allow employees to stay focused. Other perks of working for Chobani include a discounted corporate gym membership, team-building events and Apple products. The unending supply of yogurt doesn't hurt either.

2. Live by your core values. Chobani lives by their core values. They are present in every aspect of the business from internal communications and social media outlets to the hugs the boss gives his employees.

These core values led them to sponsor the Olympics. They had a huge celebration in Upstate NY inviting the entire community near their plant, their farmers, and their employees. They constructed a huge screen, handed out yogurt, and connected the community around them.

3. Forge relationships, not business deals. Chobani’s favorite marketing campaign was Real Love Stories where fans shared their love for the product. One man biked miles and miles to the plant just to see where his yogurt was made and documented it. Their latest effort was to open Chobani SoHo to meet their fans in real life.

The company does business with people and Hamdi believes that being transparent and real are top priorities. For example, when people tweet Chobani, they receive a personal response back from someone at the company.

4. Make yourself known to customers. Leadership is the most important part of growing a business. Hamdi is involved in every aspect of the business. He spends time outside the SoHo store in order to listen to his customers and makes sure to visit every office.

Retrieved from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229823

7 Things Great Entrepreneurs Don't Do

These days, everyone with a MacBook and a blog thinks he’s an entrepreneur. Well, here’s a little tough love for the entrepreneurial generation: Calling yourself a CEO doesn’t make you one and a small army of Twitter followers doesn’t make you a leader, either.

As a wise VC who’s name escapes me once said, “There are entrepreneurs and there are Entrepreneurs.”

Not to dash your hopes and dreams, but the truth is the vast majority of you simply aren’t cut out to be entrepreneurs or leaders. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s true. And the sooner you realize you’re not going to be the second coming of Mark Zuckerberg, the better.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to reach for the stars. As Robert Browning said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” But having grown up in the high-tech industry and worked with hundreds of real CEOs, VCs, and Entrepreneurs for decades, one thing I can tell you is the word has become so overused, it’s almost meaningless.

So while there is no one-size-fits-all model for true entrepreneurs, in my experience, there are some things they seem to have in common. This might surprise you, but what sets them apart isn’t some laundry list of attributes. It’s their actions. What makes them unique is what they do and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t do.

1. They don’t think about work-life balance.They’re mostly workaholics. What that means is their work comes first. It’s what they live for. They’re not freewheeling, fun-loving people who live for the weekend. They live to do what they love, and that’s work.

2. They don’t try to be what they’re not.Probably the most damaging business myth to come along in decades is personal branding. You are not a product, and you can’t change who you are. Besides, real entrepreneurs don’t think about themselves. They think about their ideas and how to turn them into great products and services. And they deliver.

3. They don’t do it for the money.They don’t whine about how hard they work for peanuts. They just do it. And because they’re passionate about what they do and focused like a laser beam, the money eventually comes, big-time.

4. They don’t have day jobs.Great entrepreneurs don’t just dip their toes in the water. They jump in headfirst without a thought about the rocks below. They don’t do a little of this and a little of that. When they hit on something they think is really cool and exciting, they go all in.

5. They don’t give in to fear.They don’t pay attention to those voices in their heads – you know, the ones that haunt you with everything that can go wrong. They’re not fearless, mind you. Nobody is. They just don’t let their fear stop them from taking risks. They do listen to some voices, though: the voice of reason and their instincts.

6. They don’t have grand visions.While some do have grand delusions that they’re destined for greatness – a prophecy that’s often self-fulfilling, interestingly enough – for the most part, they generally don’t have grand visions for their companies. Zuckerberg, for example, wasn’t trying to create a company. He just wanted to rate the looks of fellow classmates.

7. They don’t have virtual mentors.Most people follow all sorts of writers, bloggers and tweeters these days. That’s fine, but to get somewhere in life, to do great things, you have to have real mentors in the real world. Former Intel chairman Andy Grove mentored Steve Jobs. Jobs, in turn, advised Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Behind every great entrepreneur is at least one great mentor. A real one.

Most importantly, real entrepreneurs don’t call themselves entrepreneurs. They don’t do what everyone else is doing. They don’t follow the status quo, conventional wisdom or popular fads. They carve their own unique path. They’re leaders of their own destiny. That’s what drives them. And that’s why they succeed.

Retrieved from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229725

Andrew Mason’s Life After Groupon

Andrew Mason’s Life After Groupon

Anthony Bolante/ReutersAndrew Mason is the co-founder of Groupon.

Andrew Mason is back.

In an online post on Thursday, Mr. Mason, the quirky co-founder of Groupon, announced his plans and gave an update on what he had been doing since being firedas Groupon’s chief executive at the end of February.

Mr. Mason revealed that he would become a part-time partner at Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up incubator. That means he will spend one day a week over the next several months advising young companies. Later this summer, Mr. Mason, who has been based in Chicago, plans to move to San Francisco with his wife, he said.

Once there, he plans to start a company.“If there’s a silver lining to leaving Groupon, it’s the opportunity to start something new,” Mr. Mason said in the post. “I’ve accumulated a backlog of ideas over the last several years, my favorite of which I’ll be turning into a new company this fall.”

A onetime darling of the technology world, Groupon quickly fell from grace after going public in late 2011. The online commerce company reported quarter after quarter of disappointing results, and its stock price sank. It was not surprising to many observers when Mr. Mason was finally pushed out by the board.

(Still, the hedge fund Jana Partners apparently sees a promising future in Groupon; it accumulated a 3.3 percent stake in the company in the first quarter.)

In the months since leaving Groupon, Mr. Mason has been engaging in some “cliched pursuits of the unemployed,” he said. Those include traveling, losing weight and reading.

And then there’s the new album.

“One thing that surprised me” about managing Groupon employees, Mr. Mason said, “was that many would arrive at orientation with minimal understanding of basic business wisdom.”

“I came to realize that there was a real need to present business wisdom in a format that is more accessible to the younger generation.”

He continues:

It was with this in mind that I spent a week in LA earlier this month recording Hardly Workin’, a seven song album of motivational business music targeted at people newly entering the workforce. These songs will help young people understand some of the ideas that I’ve found to be a key part of becoming a productive and effective employee. I’m really happy with the results and look forward to sharing them as soon as I figure out how to load music onto iTunes, hopefully in the next few weeks.

This is not a joke, according to TechCrunch, which says it has confirmed with Mr. Mason that the album “is for real.”

Retrieved from :http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/andrew-masons-life-after-groupon/?ref=grouponinc&_r=0

What you should know about E-Commerce security

IT security has become an issue for many SMEs who sell goods and services on their websites. E-Commerce websites open up the opportunity increase sales but many businesses’ fear of hacking and other information security issues prevent them from taking the plunge.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protected pages enable browsers to identify the server as a trusted entity and ensure privacy and authentication through a protected encryption. Obtaining an authorised SSL certificate is the first step to safeguarding transactions online.

Aside from the obvious SSL certificate, there are other concerns that still play on the minds of business owners. So what are these concerns? And what else do businesses have to be aware of?

Hacking

More than 46 per cent of online businesses identified hacking as the number one security concern over the past year, according to the 2010 Sensis e-Business report. Hackers, fraudsters and privacy intruders can work out ways to track your customers’ shopping and surfing habits by monitoring cookies. More importantly, some hackers can block the websites that your customers frequently open or visit.

What’s the solution? Tell your customers to delete all cookies – including tracking cookies – from their web browser after banking or shopping online. You should delete cookies from your browser also. Web browsers can also be optimised to prevent slow browsing issues.

Data Theft

Although online banking and shopping is very convenient, sometimes insufficient security measures can leave your customers’ personal and confidential information vulnerable to hackers, cybercriminals and privacy intruders.

What’s the solution? Protect your business and your customers against identity or data theft by safeguarding private and confidential information. The best way to do this is to configure a firewall on your PC, encrypt important files and folders, and turn on the phishing filter.

Online Credit Card Fraud

It doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced online store owner or are new to e-commerce, you should know how to detect fraudulent credit card transactions. Online credit card fraud is steadily increasing and you need to ensure that your credit card information remains in safe hands.

What’s the solution? The best solution is to remove system restore points by cleaning up the disk space. This is beneficial as hackers or privacy intruders will be unable to track your activities.

Virus Threats

Viruses, malware and adware are all information-gathering programs and usually run in the background without your customers consent or knowledge. These programs monitor their online activities, shopping habits and other details and are capable of tracking user credit card information, passwords and bank account details.

What’s the solution? Minimise security risks by installing an antivirus program to protect your computer from viruses, spyware, malware and adware.

Retrieved from : http://blog.exa.com.au/e-commerce/what-you-should-know-about-e-commerce-security/

Who is Alibaba Group ?

Who is Alibaba Group?

Alibaba.com is the first online business that appeared since year 1999 by Jack Ma (Ma Yun). Basically, Alibaba.com is owned by Alibaba Group which its owner and founder is Jack Ma. Alibaba Group is privately owned Hangzhou-based family of internet-based company which contains business-to-business online marketplaces, retail and payment platforms, shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. The business started in 1999 with the web domain Alibaba.com a business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. After four years, Alibaba Group managed to generates sales and revenue up to 1.1 trillion yuan which is $170 billion USD.

Taobao.com

At the same time, Alibaba Group had created a new online shopping web which called Taobao.com which is similar to e-Bay and Amazon in year 2003. The company primarily operates in the People’s Republic of China. The company allows the buyers to judge the seller’s credit from their selling prestige, or the history of comment and complaint and also providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores that mainly cater to consumers.

In April 2008, Taobao introduced Taobao Mall to complement its consumer-to-consumer marketplace. Since then, Taobao Mall has established itself as the destination for quality, brand name goods for Chinese consumers. Taobao Mall launched an independent web domain, tmall.com, and enhanced its focus on product verticals and improvements in shopping experience in November 2010. It became an independent business in June 2011 and changed its Chinese name to Tian Mao (Tmall) in January 2012.

In 2008, Taobao also announced the “Big Taobao” strategy with the aim of becoming a provider of e-commerce infrastructure services for all e-commerce market participants, hence fueling the overall growth of the online shopping industry.

In October 2010, Taobao beta launched eTao as an independent online shopping search engine, providing product and merchant information from a number of major consumer e-commerce websites in China.

In May 2011, Alibaba Group opened a physical furniture store in Beijing under the Taobao Mall brand. The five-story 25,000sqm Taobao Mall iFengChao Furniture Showroom opened as a complement to their online stores.

In June 2011, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Jack Ma revealed that Taobao will be split into three different companies: Taobao Marketplace, Tmall.com , and eTao (a shopping search engine). The move was said to be necessary for Taobao to “meet competitive threats that emerged in the past two years during which the Internet and e-commerce landscape has changed dramatically.”

From 2012 onwards, Taobao began to accept international Visa and MasterCard credit cards; prior, only domestic banks were supported by AliPay. The plan to support international credit cards was announced in late 2011.

On April 29, 2013,Alibaba announced an investment of USD 586 million in Sina Weibo. Taobao and Sina agreed deep cooperation in various fields. On August 1, 2013, Alibaba launched Weibo for Taobao, which allows users to link Sina Weibo accounts with Taobao accounts.

Let’s talk about Jack Ma (Ma Yun).

Do you know Jack Ma failed his exam twice before? But now he is a very successful entrepreneur in China by conducting online business. Let’s understand Jack Ma in details.

Jack Ma born in Hangzhou,China. Eventually he attended Hangzhou’s Teacher’s Institute although he filed his exam twice before and he graduated in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in English. In 1995, Jack Ma founded China Yellowpages, widely believed to be China’s first Internet-based company. From 1998 to 1999, Ma headed an information technology company established by the Centre, a department of Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. He founded Alibaba.com in 1999, a China-based business-to-business marketplace site which currently serves more than 79 million members from more than 240 countries and territories. Jack Ma now works as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and he owns $3.4 billion USD (2012).

Achievement:

·         Year 2004: Jack Ma was chosen by China Central Television and its viewers as one of the “Top 10 Business Leaders of the Year”.

·         Year 2005: Jack Ma was selected by the World Economic Forum as a “Young Global Leader”.

^·          Year 2005: Jack Ma was named one of the “25 Most Powerful Businesspeople in Asia” by Fortune. He was selected by Businessweek as a “Businessperson of the Year”

·         Year 2007-2008: One of the 30 “World’s Best CEOs” by Barron’s.

·         Year 2009: Jack Ma was honored by Time magazine with inclusion into the Time 100 list of the world’s 100 most influential people. One of the“Top 10 Most Respected Entrepreneurs in China” by Forbes China in 2009. Ma received the “2009 CCTV Economic Person of the Year: Business Leaders of the Decade Award”.

·         Year 2010: Jack Ma was selected by Forbes Asia as one of “Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy” for his contribution to disaster relief and poverty. 

Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group companies and affiliated entities

Alibaba.com

Alibaba.com Limited (simplified Chinese:阿里巴巴网络有限公司; traditional Chinese: 阿里巴巴網絡有限公司),), the flagship company of Alibaba Group, is the world’s largest online business-to-business trading platform for small businesses.

Founded in Hangzhou in eastern China, Alibaba.com has three major marketplaces. The company’s English language international marketplace (www.alibaba.com) serves to bring together importers and exporters from more than 240 countries and regions. The China marketplace (www.1688.com) is developed for domestic business-to-business trade in China. In addition, Alibaba.com offers a transaction-based wholesale platform, AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com), which allows smaller buyers to buy small quantities of goods at wholesale prices.

The company claims that together these marketplaces have more than 79 million registered users.

1688.com recently launched a new direct channel that is responsible for USD 30 million in daily transaction value.

Taobao

Taobao Marketplace, or simply Taobao, is the biggest consumer-to-consumer online shopping platform in China. Founded in 2003, it provides a wide variety of product offerings. According to the Alibaba Group official website Taobao has achieved a total of 500 million registered users, 60 million regular visitors, 800 million products and a sales average of 48,000 items per minute as of July 2013.

Taobao continues to attract new stores to its platform. According to Zhang Yu, the director of Taobao, the number of stores on Taobao with annual sales under CNY 100 thousand increased by 60% from 2011-2013. Over the same period, the number of stores with sales between CNY 10 thousand and CNY 1 million increased by 30%, and the number of stores with sales over CNY 1 million increased by 33%.

Tmall.com

Tmall.com was introduced in April 2008 as a dedicated business-to-consumer (B2C) platform to complement Taobao’s consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace and became an independent business in June 2011. It is now a major online shopping destination for quality, brand name goods in China.

eTao

eTao (www.etao.com) was beta-launched by Taobao in October 2010 as an independent search engine and became an independent business in June 2011. It is the most comprehensive shopping search engine in China, covering product results from most Chinese online shopping platforms.

Alipay

Launched in 2004, Alipay (www.alipay.com) (simplified Chinese: 支付宝, ) is a third-party online payment platform. According to analyst research report, Alipay has the biggest market share in China with over 700 million registered accounts as of the end of 2012. However how many active or unique accounts this translates to is unknown, with Alibaba Group refusing to provide an answer. It is highly likely that this figure will surpass PayPal's 117 million active users regardless.

Alipay provides an escrow service, in which consumers can verify whether they are happy with goods they have bought before releasing money to the seller. This has been a significant advantage to the service as China's weak consumer protection laws have reduced consumer confidence in C2C and even B2C quality control.

Alipay partners with more than 100 financial institutions including Visa and Mastercard to provide payment solutions for Taobao.com and Tmall.com as well as more than 460,000 Chinese businesses. Internationally, Alipay connects more than 300 worldwide merchants directly to consumers in China. It currently supports transactions in 12 major foreign currencies. Alipay is an affiliate of Alibaba Group.

The PBOC, China's central bank, issued licensing regulations in June 2010 for third-party payment providers. It also issued separate guidelines for foreign-funded payment institutions. Because of this, Alipay, which accounts for half of China's non-bank online payment market, was restructured as a domestic company controlled by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma in order to facilitate the regulatory approval for the license. The 2010 transfer of Alipay's ownership was controversial, with media reports in 2011 that Yahoo! and Softbank (Alibaba Group's controlling shareholders) were not informed of the sale for nominal value. Chinese business publications Century Weekly criticised the actions of Ma, while Ma stated that Alibaba Group's board of directors were aware of the transaction. The incident was widely criticized in foreign and Chinese media as harming foreign trust in making Chinese investments. The ownership dispute was resolved by Alibaba Group, Yahoo! and Softbank in July 2011.

Alipay recently launched a financial product platform called Yu E Bao that is quickly growing in popularity. There are still some paperwork issues with the China Securities Regulatory Commission, but Alipay plans to expand the product while these are sorted out.

Aliyun

Alibaba Cloud Computing aims to build an advanced data-centric cloud computing service platform, including e-commerce data mining, high-speed massive e-commerce data processing, and as well as data customization. It was established in September 2009 in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Alibaba Group.

Aliyun. The cloud computing industry in China is in early developmental stages at this time. Adoption of cloud services and is serving more and more customers; however user familiarity and understanding of the technology is still underdeveloped as it has only been introduced in the past few years. Cloud computing services is currently estimated to lag five years behind the US in infrastructure and consumer development.

The Chinese cloud market currently represents only 3% of the global cloud market with Gartner projecting 40% annual growth. In service revenue, the Chinese cloud industry is projected to reach US$18.6 billion in revenue in 2013. In its recent Global Cloud Index report, Cisco forecast that the Asia region will generate the majority of global cloud traffic by 2016.

Alipay is looking to differentiate its cloud services from competitors by providing free market information and statistical data. To do this, they have partnered with the YunFen Fund in a US$161 million deal.

There is significant competition for the high-growth Chinese cloud market. TenCent and Baidu have both claimed that their own cloud networks are the largest in China and are continuing to invest in personal storage solutions. Tencent’s Weiyun is being positioned as the third component to its mobile platform that already includes the WeiBo micro-blogging service and the WeiXin (WeChat) group chat service.

Meanwhile Baidu, the search engine web services company is investing heavily in cloud computing, committing US$1.6 billion alone in a new data centre. On the consumer side, it recently announced a deal to provide free personal cloud storage to Android phones powered by selected Qualcomm chips in a bit to expand its consumer base. Yunio is a small start up compared to these competitors that intends on providing a syncing cloud-based storage service that should appeal to professionals. The functionality of Yunio wil mimic that of Dropbox in the US. Huawei, one of the world’s largest telecommunications equipment makers is similarly readying its global cloud service for 2013, however has encountered setbacks in US government license regulation due to its ties to the Chinese government and military.

IBM’s SmartCloud and Microsoft similarly have aggressive entrance strategies and it is expected that Amazon will also soon be entering the foray. It’s still very early days for Cloud in China but it is predicted there will be 12x growth over the next 10 years

Beyond competition there are many technical setbacks to the implementation of nationwide cloud services. Yunio CEO Chris Matthews notes that the Internet infrastructure in China is fractured in both region and ISP, making it more difficult to set up a reliable nationwide service.“In China, you have eight bandwidth providers nationwide and none of them play well with each other. This is human implemented, it’s not a technical problem”. While salary costs are lower in China, any savings on engineering staff are offset by additional bandwidth and server costs.

China Yahoo!

In October 2005, Alibaba Group formed a strategic partnership with Yahoo! Inc and acquired China Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com.cn), which is a Chinese portal with a focus on essential Internet services including news, email and search....

Corporate governance

As of January 2013, Jack Ma was Alibaba Group's chief executive officer. Ma announced his intention to step down from this post on January 15, 2013. Alibaba Group is estimated to have an IPO some time in 2013.

CEO Jonathan Lu confirmed this IPO again in July 2013, quoted in the press as saying, “We are ready and can do an IPO any time.” He also revealed that the firm has still not decided where to list, but is looking at the stock exchanges of New York and Hong Kong.

Naming

Jack Ma said, "One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said do you know about Alibaba? And she said yes. I said what do you know about Alibaba, and she said ‘Alibaba and 40 thieves'. And I said yes, this is the name! Then I went onto the street and found 30 people and asked them, ‘Do you know Alibaba?’ People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China… They all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba — open sesame. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So…easy to spell, and globally known. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name Alimama, in case someone wants to marry us!"

• In December 1998, Jack Ma and other 17 founders released their first online marketplace named "Alibaba Online".
• From 1999 to 2000, Alibaba Group raised a total of US$25 million from SoftBank, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and some other institutions.
• In December 2001, Alibaba.com achieved profitability.
• In May 2003, Taobao was founded as a consumer e-commerce platform.
• In December 2004, Alipay, which started as a service on the Taobao platform, became an independent business.
• In October 2005, Alibaba Group took over the operation of China Yahoo! as part of its strategic partnership with Yahoo! Inc.
• In November, 2007, Alibaba.com successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
• In April 2008, Taobao established Taobao Mall (Tmall.com), a dedicated B2C platform, to complement its C2C marketplace.
• In September 2008, Alibaba Group R&D Institute was established.
• In September 2009, Alibaba Group established Alibaba Cloud Computing in conjunction with its 10-year anniversary.
• In May 2010, Alibaba Group announced a plan to earmark 0.3% of its annual revenues to fund environmental protection initiatives.
• In October 2010, Taobao beta-launched eTao as an independent shopping search engine.
• In June 2011, Alibaba Group reorganized Taobao into three separate companies: Taobao Marketplace, Taobao Mall (Tmall.com) and eTao.
• In July 2011, Alibaba Cloud Computing launched its first self-developed mobile operating system, Aliyun OS over K-Touch Cloud Smartphone.
• In January 2012, Tmall.com changed its Chinese name as part of a rebranding exercise to reinforce its positioning as a source of high-quality, brand-name products.

• Alibaba.com
• Alibaba UK
• TradeFord

From URL : http://alibabaagroup.blogspot.com/2011/12/alibaba-group-companies-and-affiliated.html

Jack Ma

A legendary story about Ma Yun

Ma Yun, pioneer of China's e-commerce

Ma Yun is chief executive officer (CEO) of the Hangzhou-based Alibaba Networking Technology Co in east China's Zhejiang Province.

A former teacher of English in Zhejiang, Ma started the country's first e-commerce website - www.china.alibaba.com - in 1998.

In just six years, it has become the leader in its field, serving well over 50,000 member traders in 200 countries and regions, with an annual business turnover amounting to about US$10 billion.

Heaven stands by iron-willed men

Ma's story seems legendary.

"The first few years were pretty good for us," he recalled.

"In 2001 and 2002, however, the so-called 'Internet bubble' exploded and because of that, staying alive became our top concern."

Despite the adversity, Ma did not give up his ambition of turning the company into the greatest of its kind in the world.

"I believe in the Chinese proverb 'Heaven stands by iron-willed men,'" he told the audience.

"Heaven," so to speak, did come to his rescue between late April and early July of 2003 when the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak hit China.

"For a time, travel, visits and conferences had to be cancelled.

"Suddenly, business people realized that transactions could be negotiated and concluded via the Internet and that business people did not have to meet face-to-face. Alibaba boomed overnight," Ma said.

In 2003, Alibaba generated an average of 1 million yuan (US$121,000) per day in turnover.

Since the beginning of 2004, it has yielded a daily average of 1 million yuan in net profit.

For 2005, "the company aims at paying 1 million yuan in taxes per day, leaving a net profit of at least 2 million yuan (US$241,800)."

Asked about the secret of his success, Ma cited the famous tale about the race between the tortoise and the hare, where the former won.

To be successful in this world, he said, "you must combine the merits of both: the speed of the hare and the endurance and willpower of the tortoise."

In 2004, Alibaba invested US$84 million in business expansion, mainly in overseas operations.

Alibaba is not the only Chinese business that has begun to develop itself overseas, or "go global."

From URL : http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2006-03/14/content_534874.htm