“Open Sesame!” is the magic word used by Ali Baba, a boy from Baghdad, to open a treasure cave, get enormously wealthy, and enjoy a life of freedom and happiness after going through a thrilling adventure filled with surprises. This story is told in a classic Arabian tale named “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, which is known to many generations of people around the world and has inspired them to follow their dreams.We are currently witnessing the revolution of information technology that is benefiting our life on daily basis and providing a golden opportunity for thousands of young people around the world to achieve their dreamst. During his time as a student at the Stanford University, Sergey Brin, a boy from Russia, made the internet search engine vastly efficient and developed Google, which connects the user to every website that contains information about what was searched.Google, which is currently the best information and communications system, is being used by people all over the world in their own languages. In 2013, Google’s total assets were worth 70 billion USD whereas their market cap hit 400 billion USD. Google has about 52,000 employees. Sergey owns 7 percent of his company and has already become one of the wealthiest people in the world.
Jack Ma, a boy from China, became an English teacher and had an opportunity to travel to the United States. Having understood the great magnitude of the huge change that can be made by offering the most populous country in the world to use the internet and seize its opportunities in their own language, Jack Ma established his Alibaba Company together with his friends.Alibaba created and has operated websites such as Taobao, which allowed the Chinese people to use the internet to sell and purchase whatever they wanted, and Tmal, which opened up vast opportunities for businesses to promote their products online. They also blocked access to Baidu, which is China’s biggest search engine. Currently, Alibaba accounts for 80 percent of China’s e-commerce, which is growing continuously. Alibaba does not charge buyers and sellers, and provides payment guarantee. Income is generated through promoting products and services by search. Alipay, their payment system, is based on escrow payment, which transfers the payment only after the buyer receives their product. It solved the lack of trust in e-commerce. Alibaba generated a net income of 3.7 billion USD in 2013.Last week Alibaba made its initial public offering (IPO)on the New York Stock Exchange and the price of their shares went up from the initial 68 USD to 90 USD. More than 100 million shares were sold in only a few hours. Alibaba’s market cap reached 231.4 billion USD, which surpasses the world’s e-commerce giants Amazon and Facebook. In 2013, the total online commerce made on Alibaba was worth almost 300 billion USD, which was 50 percent higher than the year before. One-third of the total e-commerce was made on mobile phones, which was three times as much than that in 2012.
A total of 250 million people used Alibabato do online trade in 2013. It shows that there are great potentials of e-commerce income in the future.Alibaba’s IPO not only brings a great opportunity for growth, but also opens the door to China for foreign investors, especially those from the United States.It demonstrates that China is doing a good job attracting portfolio investment as well as foreign direct investment. It means that Alibaba, one company, has attracted 24 billion USD, which is 2.4 times larger than Mongolia’s economy, in only two days.More than 5,000 employees of Alibaba are company shareholders, each of which now has shares worth one billion USD. It produced many millionaires and created an opportunity for Hangzhou, located two flying hours to the southeast of Beijing, to expand its economy and improve livelihoods.
The Alibaba story shows that even a communist country can gain the trust of investors as long as they have the potential for future expansion, operate in an internationally accepted transparent manner, and have independent audits done.Jack Ma, who owns 9 percent of his company, now has shares worth 21 billionUSD, which makes him one of the wealthiest persons in China.
I am confident that the door to treasure cave will soon be opened by a boy or a girl from Mongolia. I uphold this belief because the wonder of advancing development in information and technology removes the boundaries of nations around the world. Mongolia might be a landlocked country, but not mind-locked.The current advancement in information technology offers Mongolia an opportunity to deliver its services to any country in the world without losing time.
The secret to the magic word that opens the door to treasure will be “simple idea + simple plan”.I hope that the young people of Mongolia are aware of that they can achieve great success in turning simple acts into great deeds by planning with vision and being hard-working and dedicated just like Sergey and Jack.
2014.09.24