Shopping in China can be a nightmare. First there are the hazards of simply leaving your home: the smog, the traffic and the crowds. Then you have two options: go to a modern shopping mall, where you can buy western branded goods, made in China, for twice what you would pay for them in the west; or you can try your luck at the markets, where sellers haggle aggressively, overcharging everyone they can – and you never know if what you are buying is real or fake.
What if someone could take this unpleasant experience and make it convenient and quick? Force monopolistic sellers to compete and make it harder for them to rip you off? Give consumers better information about the sellers they are buying from and the products they are buying? Push prices down and facilitate thousands of new small businesses in the process?
This is what Jack Ma has done, almost single-handedly, creating an ecommerce juggernaut known as Alibaba.