Jack Ma, who continues to serve as the company's Chairman, founded Alibaba with seventeen other co-founders in 1998 Hangzhou. Ma has been instrumental in the company's public image-a gifted public speaker and former civil servant, he is known for having a "folksy charm" that translates easily in both Chinese and English. Over the course of 1999 and 2000, the group raised a grand total of $25 million from institutions ranging from Goldman Sachs (GS  ), Fidelity, SoftBank (TYO: 9984), and more. The company became profitable in December 2001, and by 2003 Taobao was created as its consumer e-commerce platform. In 2011 however, a large controversy developed as a result of the transfer of Alipay, a valuable online payments business, away from Alibaba to a company controlled directly by Ma. This raised concerns among minority shareholders SoftBank and Yahoo that their stakes in Alibaba would be eroded. Ma was accused of asset-stripping by his investors; Ma contended that there were a number of regulatory reasons that had called for the transfer, which was, regardless, a huge violation of corporate governance norms-his public image has suffered somewhat as a result.

 Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA  ), commonly referred to simply as Alibaba, is a hugely successful Chinese e-commerce company; on top of an shopping search engine, electronic payment services, and data-centric cloud computing services, the company provides numerous types of sales services ranging from consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer, and business-to business through web portals. Its consumer-to-consumer portal, Taobao, is very similar to eBay.com (EBAY  )-the portal features close to a billion products for sale and is among the top twenty most-visited websites in the world. A worldwide shipping giant, Alibaba is widely considered to be the Eastern equivalent of Amazon (AMZN  ), as it primarily operated in the People's Republic of China (though it is steadily gaining an international following). American consumers often know of Alibaba through its relationship with Yahoo (YHOO  ); Yahoo owns has a 15% stake in the company, which is valued at approximately $30 billion. So how did this company become an international giant?

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Jack Ma, who continues to serve as the company's Chairman, founded Alibaba with seventeen other co-founders in 1998 Hangzhou. Ma has been instrumental in the company's public image-a gifted public speaker and former civil servant, he is known for having a "folksy charm" that translates easily in both Chinese and English. Over the course of 1999 and 2000, the group raised a grand total of $25 million from institutions ranging from Goldman Sachs (GS  ), Fidelity, SoftBank (TYO: 9984), and more. The company became profitable in December 2001, and by 2003 Taobao was created as its consumer e-commerce platform. In 2011 however, a large controversy developed as a result of the transfer of Alipay, a valuable online payments business, away from Alibaba to a company controlled directly by Ma. This raised concerns among minority shareholders SoftBank and Yahoo that their stakes in Alibaba would be eroded. Ma was accused of asset-stripping by his investors; Ma contended that there were a number of regulatory reasons that had called for the transfer, which was, regardless, a huge violation of corporate governance norms-his public image has suffered somewhat as a result.

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Nevertheless Alibaba continued to draw in new users, and in 2009 received an investment of $17 million from the General Atlantic growth equity firm. In yet another controversy, the company became listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, but was withdrawn in May of 2012. This withdrawal stirred up quite a bit of dispute: Ma and his board were accused of withdrawing from the Hong Kong market for the express purpose of pursuing an American IPO (the advantage of which would be being able to issue duel-class shares with different voting rights). Furthermore, prior to filling out F-1 as a foreign issuer in the United States, Alibaba made acquisition after acquisition (atypical for the company at the time), and bought stakes in companies such as China Vision Holdings, Lyft, Peel Technologies, and Weibo (WB  ), among others; in September 2014, Alibaba had an IPO price in the United States valued at $25 billion, making it one of the largest IPO's in history.

Nevertheless Alibaba continued to draw in new users, and in 2009 received an investment of $17 million from the General Atlantic growth equity firm. In yet another controversy, the company became listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, but was withdrawn in May of 2012. This withdrawal stirred up quite a bit of dispute: Ma and his board were accused of withdrawing from the Hong Kong market for the express purpose of pursuing an American IPO (the advantage of which would be being able to issue duel-class shares with different voting rights). Furthermore, prior to filling out F-1 as a foreign issuer in the United States, Alibaba made acquisition after acquisition (atypical for the company at the time), and bought stakes in companies such as China Vision Holdings, Lyft, Peel Technologies, and Weibo (WB  ), among others; in September 2014, Alibaba had an IPO price in the United States valued at $25 billion, making it one of the largest IPO's in history.

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From here on out, what does the future look like for Ma and Alibaba? Although famous for its Taobao platform, the company's future success will hinge largely on its new Tmall platform, which allows brand owners-as opposed to individual vendors-sell their wares to individual consumers. This platform allows Alibaba to collect commission fees, whereas Taobao generates revenue via advertisements alone. There has also been speculation on whether Ma and Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook (FB  ), will find a way to collaborate on introducing the latter's social platform to China. Yet China has managed to move forward so far without Facebook, which would have to significantly alter its format-either by watering it down or limiting its potential Chinese users to other users within China. However, either change would spur international condemnation-thus the prospect, though appealing, remains as of yet hypothetical.

From here on out, what does the future look like for Ma and Alibaba? Although famous for its Taobao platform, the company's future success will hinge largely on its new Tmall platform, which allows brand owners-as opposed to individual vendors-sell their wares to individual consumers. This platform allows Alibaba to collect commission fees, whereas Taobao generates revenue via advertisements alone. There has also been speculation on whether Ma and Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook (FB  ), will find a way to collaborate on introducing the latter's social platform to China. Yet China has managed to move forward so far without Facebook, which would have to significantly alter its format-either by watering it down or limiting its potential Chinese users to other users within China. However, either change would spur international condemnation-thus the prospect, though appealing, remains as of yet hypothetical.

© Christopher Penler / Shutterstock.com