Alibaba’s World

How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business

01 August, 2015

Porter Erisman

Pan Macmillan India

320 pages, Rs. 499

In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Westerners had never heard of held the largest IPO in history—bigger than those of Google, Facebook and Twitter combined. Alibaba is today the world’s largest e-commerce company, with a customer base more than twice the size of Amazon’s. Erisman, who headed the company’s international marketing from 2000 to 2008, shows how Jack Ma, a Chinese schoolteacher who twice failed his college entrance exams, founded Alibaba and led it to its present dominance.