Kautsar Ikrami's Key Ideas from Alibaba
by Duncan Clark

1. The e–commerce edge: Alibaba have several websites, but the most popular ones used for e–commerce are Taobao (marketplace) and Tmall (curated market).
2. The logistics edge: Nothing makes e–commerce more reliable than a quick and efficient delivery system. Alibaba and the top 3 delivery companies — STO Express, YTO Express, ZTO Express partnered to invest in a firm called China Smart Logistics.
3. The financial edge: Trust is a big deal in online transactions. They came up with Alipay, a PayPal substitute. Alipay is now by far the most popular online payment tool in China.

Jack Ma's experience growing up had a tremendous impact on his life and career.

He grew up as a poor Chinese boy who had a hard time understanding maths. Because of this, he had to write the pre–college examination severally, but his persistence later won. It's not a surprise that Jack Ma did incredibly well in his studies.

Jack Ma concluded his studies and began his teaching career, then later began creating a business out of his skill.

Very few companies carry the personalities (commitment and persistence) of their founders, and Alibaba is one of them.

When you venture into a business that is not common, you will have difficulty making progress. This is because people can seldom tell the value of your product or service. The bottom line is, people will never do business with you when they can't see how it will positively affect their lives.

If you find yourself in such a situation, the only way out is to invest massively in awareness campaigns. That’s what Jack Ma did.

We learn from Jack Ma about dreams is:

1. You can never go beyond them. If you dream small, you will indefinitely put in small effort and that will lead to small achievements. But big dreams will inspire you to break limits.
2. Start where you are, with the experience and resources that you've got. He knows he couldn’t focus on large business such as Sillicon Valley companies so, he refused to be.
3. Do not copy your competitors because you don't know the whole story. Find what works for you and stick to it.

In the beginning, Alibaba was B2B platform, but after a while, the business stopped bringing much profit. On the basis of that and a few other reasons, Jack Ma decided it was time to branch into consumer e-commerce.

Jack Ma's strategies:

1. The element of surprise and doing it underground.
2. Doing things differently (pricing and communication). eBay charged merchants some amount for product listing, whereas Taobao made it free for anyone to put up their product or service on the site.

With these added advantages, it was a matter of time before Taobao kicked eBay out of China and dominated the market.