Alibaba, the biggest eCommerce giant from China, is all set for its IPO listing, which the company has filed in Hong Kong. The IPO may take place in Q3 this year, and it is expected that it may raise up to $20 billion, biggest in Hong Kong after 2010.
Image Source: yahoo.com
Reportedly, Alibaba
has proposed to split its one ordinary share into eightfold, in order
to raise more funds. The company’s single ordinary share stands at
4 billion, and dividing one to eight will make it $32 billion.
Alibaba will be proposing the idea at its annual general meeting to be held on July 15, in Hong Kong. Here, the investors will be asked to vote for in favour or against the proposal, as they would want to. And, if the proposal gets the winning votes, the company will carry out the spilt by July 2020.
“The Board of
Directors is proposing the Share Subdivision to increase the
flexibility for the Company in future capital market activities.
Among other reasons, the one-to-eight share subdivision will increase
the number of shares available for issuance at a lower per share
price, and the Board of Directors believes that this will increase
flexibility in the Company’s capital raising activities, including
the issuance of new shares,” stated Alibaba in the
filing,explaining the reason behind the splitting up of share.
According to the reports, the company’s board is already in favour of the proposal and just waiting for the investors to poll. The reports also suggest that Alibaba has already submitted its papers for IPO.
The company went for
an IPO in 2014 in the U.S. citing the lack of flexibility, as one of
the reasons to not to go for Hong Kong for the listing. It was one of
the biggest IPOs and had raised $20 billion at that time. But almost
two years ago Hong Kong made some relaxation in its listing rules,
such that most of the Chinese companies, now, are seeking for filing
IPOs in Hong Kong.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Amazon is the biggest tech company, and it has spread its arms in almost everything. And now, the company is planning to expand into the telecom industry, too. According to a report by Reuters, Amazon is planning to acquire the prepaid cellphone wireless service Boost Mobile from its parent company Sprint.
The deal with Sprint not only will make Amazon fourth largest telecom services in the US but also may provide it with the access to the T-Mobile’s wireless network for a long period of time, as both Sprint and T-Mobile are under the process of a merger. The deal between T-mobile and Sprint will be a $26 billion merger if Sprint will be able to convince antitrust regulators for the merger.
But
according to a recent report from Bloomberg, the regularity authority
does not want that the number of wireless carriers be less than four,
and the merger is actually, leading to that. So the two companies are
working towards bringing an entirely new carrier, such that they
might be giving away some of their spectrum to the new company and
finalise the merger.
Boost is a subsidiary of Sprint, but is out of the merger contract, as Sprint has already decided to sell the company. So there are no chances that after the deal, T-Mobile can own it. In fact, the company that will own Boost will have access to the Sprint’s wireless network, but not T-Mobile’s. But according to the report from Reuters, acquiring Boost will provide Amazon with access to both the company’s combined network for a span of six years.
Since the news has been making rounds, there is a questing hitting everyone’s mind, “Why Amazon would want to enter the telecom business?” It is quite simple. The company has been expanding into almost every field. It is the biggest eCommerce platform and has got its cloud computing arm. The company has got its retail stores, streaming service, and now it is also off to start its own delivery service. So why not expand into telecom?
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
A geek and a curious guy, this is how the Chinese people know, Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, the biggest Chinese group buying website. Wang Xing is a serial entrepreneur who emerged as one of the successful businessmen in China, even after facing multiple failures and now, he has built the biggest online-to-offline market in China. Also known as ‘Big Brother Xing’, he has been giving its rival, Alibaba’s Ele.me, a tough competition.
Wang Xing was born on 18 February 1979, in Longyan, to a Chinese businessman Wang Miao, the owner of a cement factory located in the city of Longyan in Fujian. Wang Xing completed a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from Tsinghua University in 2001.
Image Source: fortune.com
Having born into a business family, Xing was always into starting up his own business. Inspired by the success of Facebook in the U.S., he dropped out of the University of Delaware, where he was pursuing a PhD in computer engineering and started his first social network named Duoduoyou. The startup specifically targetted the students in the various university, but like many of other startups, it was unable to make the mark.
The
second time, he started Youzitu, that was built to serve the Chinese
students abroad. But again the startup got shut down. The next
startup that Xing started was Xiaonei that he launched in 2005. This
startup also targetted the Chinese students and was the first of his
startups, to get thousands of registered users in a small time.
But
yet again, Xing faced problems like financial issues in handling the
company and had to sell it to InterActive Corp, for US$2 million,
only after a year of its inception. InterActive Corp renamed the
company to Renren, that later raised US$740 million, in its IPO in
2011.
Having
earned enough money in the deal, Xing was able to perceive a new
startup idea and launch another social media app, which actually was
a micro-blogging app inspired by Twitter, named Fanfou. This time,
the startup went very well and had gained over 2 million user base.
But then, in 2009, Government ordered to shut down the social network
as a result of violent discussions that took place over the platform
about the Ürümqi riots. But eventually, after a small time gap,
Xing re-opened Fanfou and is still an active participant on this
platform.
Even having faced many failures in his past start-ups, Xing never became discouraged and pushed his limits even further. In 2010, he came up with his another startup, Meituan, a group buying a website for local food delivery services, consumer products and retail services. Xing received the initial funding of worth $12 million for the startup from Sequoia Capitals. This startup again was inspired by another US-based company named Groupon and sold discount vouchers on various services and deals.
The
company is backed by Tencent and is one of the biggest on-demand
services providing platforms. By the year 2014, the company had
employed over 5,000 people, and in 2015, it had registered over 200
million users. The company operates in 2800 cities in China and has
partnered with 400,000 local Chinese businesses.
On
8 October 2015, Meituan merged with a Chinese group buying site named
Dianping, and the merger became Meituan Dianping. In January 2016,
the company raised $3.3 billion worth of funding. Meituan Dianping
went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2018 at a price HK$69
per share.
Wang
Xing has always stressed on enhancing the efficiency and in fact, has
done the same in the past fifteen years. Currently, he serves Meituan
Dianping as the chairman and is also the member of the board at
Beijing Mobike Technology Co Ltd. He is an avid reader and also
writes blogs on topics like entrepreneurship, philosophy, etc.
In
2018, Xing was at number 37 in the Forbes China Rich List 2018 and at
number 379 in the Forbes Billionaires 2019 with an estimated worth
$4.1 billion. He was also listed number three on the Forbes 2018 “40
under 40” list.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Instagram on Tuesday, announced that it is testing a new checkout feature for its US users and will be rolling out the same in the next couple of weeks. According to a statement from Instagram, its US-based users will be able to shop items with tags for sale, directly from Instagram.
Image Source: esquire.com
Currently,
Instagram is one of the most engaging platforms operated by Facebook
Inc., and many retailers are using the same to selling their products
online. But the News Feed of this platform is not enough to engage
people for a longer time. Also, shopping through the app is not
convenient as there is no payment feature embedded to the app and
people are forced to contact the retailers even to know the price of
the goods. This is one of the steps that Facebook has taken to
monetise its one of the most popular platforms, in order to enter
into the eCommerce business.
The users now will be able to see and order products directly through the app. For the payment, the users will be offered with options like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, PayPal, etc.
Though
the feature will only be available for the US users, and for now,
only a few famous brands including Adidas, H&M, Kylie Cosmetics
and Michael Kors will be able to use it to sell their goods on
Instagram. Noticeably, the company has already partnered with twenty
different brands.
Though
the company has not commented on the worth of the partnership with
different brands, it has confirmed that it will be charging a fixed
fee from the various brands interested to sell on Instagram. The fee
will also be covering the purchase protection policy for those
brands, and it will be Instagram which would pay for any damage to
the items or lost items.
According
to an Instagram spokesperson, the users will only be able to buy one
thing at a time, and the feature is only available for the mobile app
users. However, the company is still working on improving the
shopping experience for its users.
While it is a piece of exciting news for the Instagram users, and also, this step will help many brands with their business, many people are also worried about the Facebook’s track record on privacy, which may also affect the launch of this new in-app purchase feature of Instagram.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
There
are rare chances that the destiny of a person meets his talent and
help him achieve the things that at a point might be unimaginable.
But there are real examples in the past that has proved that in the
success of a person his hard work and talent work even more
efficiently if his destiny is working with him too. The son of worker
Parents, Colin Huang, would have never thought that his brilliance,
and his destiny, will coincide and he will have his own rag to riches
story. The 13th richest person in China, in just three years. The
life story of Huang surely is a great example and inspiration for
many.
Colin Huang was born in 1980, in Hangzhou, to the worker-class parents. While in school, he participated and won a medal in a Mathematics Olympiad, after demonstrating an aptitude in Mathematics. This was the point when his destiny started pushing him towards a good life. The prize of the Olympiad was a scholarship to a reputable school in Zhejiang province.
Image Source: colinhuang.com
In
the school, he got to know many elite students and was even
introduced to the daughter of the Mayor of the school, as she too
studied in his class. This helped him a lot to build up confidence in
him and hence became more comfortable in interacting with the most
brilliant students of the school.
As
soon he completed his school, another opportunity came into his lap,
and he was chosen to study at the prestigious Zhejiang University,
where he pursued a degree in computer science. In his first year, he
was also selected to be a part of the Melton Foundation.
During his college, he started an internship at Microsoft Beijing, where he earned the stipend worth 6,000 yuan. According to an interview, Huang accepted that the stipend he received for the internship was already greater than the salary of his parents altogether, at that time.
After
completing his graduation, he went to the University of Wisconsin to
pursue a master’s degree. At the university, he was doing
exceptionally well, and his professor impressed by his brilliance
provided him letters for the recommendation for a few of the biggest
tech giants of that time.
After
completing his education in 2004, he received the offer letters from
three big companies, i.e. Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. Turning down all
the three offers, he decided to work with Google, the company which
had just filed its IPO in the same year.
Huang
joined Google as an engineer. After working for three years with the
company, in 2007, he resigned from his post, as he had got tired of
flying back and forth, from the US to China, to resolve even the
tiniest of matters. By the time, he had earned a lot of good money
and was able to take the decision of quitting his job.
He
flew back to China and started his first venture, an eCommerce
website named Ouku. The website became popular soon, and after three
years, in 2010, Huang sold the website. After Ouku, he founded Leqi,
another website, and then, Xunmeng, a gaming studio.
All
the three ventures he started, paid him well to lead to him to found
another venture, Pinduoduo, which is also the most successful venture
of the serial entrepreneur, Huang.
Pinduoduo
is an eCommerce platform that provides its users with offers on group
purchases. The company was founded in September 2015. Within a year,
Huang was able to raise investments from the leading companies of
China, i.e., Tencent, Gaochun and Xintianyu. The three companies
alone invested a worth of US$110 million in company’s B round
funding.
In
2018, the company reported the number of users, more than 200
million. On July 26, 2018, the company went public on NASDAQ, and
with a US$1.6 billion IPO, it became the largest IPO of 2018.
Pinduoduo is one of the youngest companies which is giving a tough
competition to the more than a decade old eCommerce giants like
Alibaba and JD.com. In fact, it is the third-largest e-commerce
company in China by sales numbers, after the mentioned companies.
According
to Huan, he had never thought of changing the world, but if he is
contributing to that, there is nothing bad in that.
Pinduoduo, gets most of its traffic from the lower-tier cities, such that people belonging to the lower-class are also able to buy things on the website. The success of the company has even made Huang the 13th richest person in China. Currently, he is working as the CEO of the company, and his net worth is estimated to be $15.6 billion.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
A degree from a famous
business school, and a 9 to 5 corporate job, the dream of every
parent for their child. And, there is no denying the fact that most
of the youngsters want this settled life for themselves, too. But not
every child is interested in the comfortable 9 to 5 race as some are
who wants to make their own identity, and do not want to work for
others but themselves. A similar situation goes to the success story
of Hiroshi Mikitani, who got perfect education and even a perfect
job, but his dream of entrepreneurship encouraged him to take the
leap and fulfil his dreams.
Early
Life
Mikitani was born on 11 March 1965, to Ryoichi Mikitani and Setsuko Miktani, in Kobe, Hy?go Prefecture, Japan. His father was an economist and was Japan’s first Fulbright Scholar to the US, and his mother worked for a trading company. His father even taught at Yale University, so the family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, from 1972 to 1974. He has two siblings, a brother who is a professor of biology at the University of Tokyo and a sister, who is a is a physician. Mikitani’s grandfather was also an entrepreneur and founded Minolta. In 1928.
Image Source: hbs.edu
Mikitani graduated with a
commerce degree from Hitotsubashi University in 1988. He, later,
completed his master’s degree in business administration from the
famous Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1993.
Career
As soon he graduated from Hitotsubashi University, Mikitani was recruited by the Industrial Bank of Japan, in 1988. In 1993, he was transferred to the US, where he took two years of break from his bank job to pursue a master’s degree from the Harvard Business School. Along with his education, he started a consulting service, his first official business.
In 1995, his birthplace, Kobe
suffered from great loss due to the 20 seconds destructive
earthquake. The incident was very heart-wrenching and led Mikitani to
move back to his country to help revitalize Japan’s economy, and
leave his job.
Founding
Rakuten
After coming back to Japan, Mikitani did not want to start over with a corporate job. Instead, he started looking at the different business model to start his own new business. At the time, the internet was revolutionising the various industries and had initiated the inception of e-commerce businesses. Netscape was working as an e-commerce website, and Amazon was just starting up its own.
The step was risky, but
Mikitani was inspired to set up his own e-commerce website. So he
founded a company named MDM, Inc. with three co-founders on 7
February 1997 and launched Rakuten, an online marketplace. The
website helped many small shop owners to reach new customers and with
the growth of their business, charging a small monthly fee from them.
The platform also helped the farmers sell their goods online. All the
four co-founders invested a total of US$250,000 from their own money.
In 1999, the company was renamed to Rakuten Inc. Just in three years
of its inception, Rakuten went public on JASDAQ in 2000. The website
became popular in no time and had grown to 2,300 stores and 95
million page views per month.
The next year, the company
launched Rakuten Travels, an online hotel reservation platform. In
2004, Rakuten started its financial services and launched a Rakuten
credit card in 2005. It soon became the largest tech giant operating
Japan’s largest Internet bank and third-largest credit company.
As Mikitani’s prime reason
to go back to Japan was to help in its economy and infrastructure, in
December 2005, Rakuten established the Rakuten Institute of
Technology in Tokyo. In 2008, the company began to expand outside
Japan, and in 2011, the company invested in Pinterest. By 2012, the
company had established its online services in Austria, Canada,
Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, France, China, Hong Kong, Korea, etc.
In March 2015, the company started trading in Bitcoin. The company also made some acquisitions, earning more profits in the overseas business including Buy.com, PriceMinister, e-book service Kobo, Ebates, and also the messaging app Viber. By 2017, Rakuten had over 14,000 employees, over 42,000 shops on its e-commerce sites, and sales of nearly US$6 billion, with over 100 million members in Japan.
Peesonal
Life
Mikitani
married Haruko in 1993 and have two children with the marriage. In
2012, Mikitani received the Alumni Achievement Award from Harvard
Business School. He was awarded the rank of Chevalier of the National
Order of the Legion of Honour by the French government in 2014. He
was also awarded the Spain-Japan Business Contribution Award by the
Spanish Chamber of Commerce in 2017.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
