Alibaba

"Fifth, is the huge population of China. It’s the largest consumer market in the world. And the largest consumer market will produce the world’s largest businesses. China Mobile, the ICBC, Tencent and Alibaba are already global scale businesses. This will spread to other fields of the service sector: e-commerce, the video game industry, the online travel industry, apparel, food and beverages … and, of course, hotels. My rough estimate is that the key players in the future hotel industry in China will have over ten thousand hotels, of which the driving force will be budget hotels. That scale will make it a world leader in future."

"I was much happier to live in Shanghai, where many streets have remained human-scaled rather than being built for cars. The French Concession, where I lived, remains leafy and full of cafés. Shanghai is highly walkable, and one is rarely more than a fifteen-minute walk from one of the city’s many subway stations. Shanghai has vowed to open [120 new parks every year](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor307) until 2025, when the city will reach 1,000 green spaces. The city of twenty-five million people works remarkably well. Like Tokyo, it has flourishing spaces for commerce, where little dumpling shops are tucked away even in subway stations. And Shanghai is superbly connected by high-speed rail to nearby cities—for example, Hangzhou, home to tech companies like Alibaba, and Suzhou, where many multinationals have manufacturing operations—which are themselves some of China’s most successful cities."

"Recently, everyone knows about SoftBank’s investment in China’s e-commerce Alibaba. SoftBank invested 2 billion yen in Alibaba’s second year of startup. Subsequently, Alibaba grew rapidly. In 2014, Alibaba was successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and as one of the shareholders, SoftBank gained 8 trillion yen in profits. Fourteen years after the investment, the profit expanded by 4000 times."

"In 2000 (Heisei 12), Masayoshi Son acquired Alibaba’s unlisted shares for 20 million dollars (about 2 billion yen). At the time, the then-unknown Alibaba grew into China’s largest e-commerce company. Softbank obtained approximately one-third of its shares, with current valuations suggesting around 60 billion dollars (about 6 trillion yen)."

"In July 2011, after completing the $50 million Series B financing led by Alibaba, the initial $10 million financing still lay in the account. Wang Xing even disclosed bank accounts in a press conference to prove that their financing was real. At that time, Meituan also predicted an impending capital market winter for group buying."

"If BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) directly entered group buying and went to war with Meituan, this is Meituan’s strong suit and they are not afraid. The fear is competitors entering from outside group buying. Crises always lurk where unseen, and you can’t predict where the competitor will strike from. Wang Xing and Meituan can only work harder and move faster."