Why Did Chinese Billionaire And Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma, Give A Teaching Lesson At Tokyo College?

Jack Ma stepped down from Alibaba's CEO position in 2013.

New Delhi: The Chinese billionaire and the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, gave his first teaching class to the diverse batch of students on June 12, 2023 at the University of Tokyo after he joined the institute as the visiting professor. Jack Ma engaged in a meaningful discussion with participating students for over two-hour seminar to disperse his rich experience and pioneering knowledge of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Tokyo college, quoted in the press release, and the University of Tokyo’s Global Leadership Program (GLP) office jointly held a special “innovation and entrepreneurship” seminar. It was focused on management philosophy and how the younger generation can achieve success in the future.

“Professor Jack Ma spoke at this seminar, primarily for the GLP-GEfIL, Global Education for Innovation and Leadership program students. The students were diverse and global in representation, including from Japan, China, India, Malaysia, and other countries,” the press release added.

Who Is Jack Ma?

Jack Ma is the founder of Chinese behemoth Alibaba which is engaged in several sectors from IT to E-commerce to cloud computing. He stepped down from Alibaba’s CEO position in 2013 and was succeed first by Jonathan Lu. The latter was replaced by Zhang. Though Ma remained the chairman until 2019, which he quit to depart from the company completely.

Since the step down, Jack Ma spends most of his time in philanthropist and activities not linked to Alibaba. He recently joined the University of Tokyo as a visiting professor, going back to the profession from which he started his career.

Jack Ma’s Success Story

Jack Ma was an English teacher by profession. He applied for KFC when it came to China but was rejected. Interestingly, all 24 applicants were selected but him. He then visited the USA with friends and learned about the computer and its potential.

He brought the insights to China and applied them to create Alibaba.