Jack Ma is founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba Group and chairman of Alibaba.com, the Hong Kong-listed unit of Alibaba Group. Early life Ma was born in the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. Ma attended Hangzhou Teachers College and graduated in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in English. Ma initially failed the entrance exam twice. While at the school, Ma was elected student chairman. He later became a lecturer in English and International Trade at the Hangzhou Dianzi University. Ma first started building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US. Ma has commented that "The day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house," and on a very slow dial-up connection, "we waited three and a half hours and got half a page.... We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved (to my house guests that) the Internet existed“ Career In 1995, Ma founded China Pages, widely believed to be China’s first Internet-based company. From 1998 to 1999, Ma headed an information technology company established by the China International Electronic Commerce Center, 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 serves more than 65 million members from more than 240 countries and territories. Ma now serves as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, which is a holding company with four major subsidiaries – Alibaba.com, Taobao, Alibaba Cloud Computing and China Yahoo!. AccomplishmentsIn 2001, Ma was selected by the World Economic Forum as a “Young Global Leader”. In 2004, he was chosen by China Central Television and its viewers as one of the “Top 10 Business Leaders of the Year”. In 2005, 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” in 2007 and one of the 30 “World’s Best CEOs” by Barron’s in 2008. In May 2009, Ma was honored by Time magazine with inclusion into the Time 100 list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In reporting Mr. Ma’s accomplishments, Adi Ignatius, former Time senior editor and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, said, “Meeting Jack Ma, you might be forgiven for thinking he's still an English teacher. The Chinese Internet entrepreneur is soft-spoken and elflike — and he speaks really good English. But as founder and CEO of Aliba