Jack Ma
Jack Ma and his wife Zhang Ying were school teachers in Hangzhou, China before quitting education to become entrepreneurs. They failed at several business ventures before raising US$60,000 in 1999 to create Alibaba, an online business-to-business sourcing platform, in their one-bedroom flat. Fifteen years later, Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO became the largest in US history. Ma claims to have applied to Harvard ten times, and to have been rejected for jobs at KFC and as a policeman, before the couple’s hard work eventually paid off. Ma’s Ant Financial Services Group, best known for Alipay, is now pushing into financial services, including a consumer money market fund and a private bank. The richest man in China as of 2014, his sizable charitable trust endows causes related to healthcare, education and the environment in China.
