An employee earning $12 per month rising as China’s third wealthiest person, Jack Ma is a man of perseverance. With a net worth of $51.5 billion (as of April 2021), his story is a perfect example of a rags-to-riches story.

Widely known as the Chinese business magnet, Jack Ma is the founder and CEO of Alibaba Group, the multinational technology company specialising in e-commerce, retail, Internet and technology. Here are some takeaways from the journey of this billionaire entrepreneur for all the aspiring and budding entrepreneurs.

5 Learnings For Entrepreneurs and Business Owners

You have to start somewhere

Jack Ma was born and raised in a communist Chinese society. Without having a strong financial background or connections, Ma learned that only education can lead him to success. This made him an enthusiast for learning English and ended up in one of China’s local teacher’s institutes.

From making $12 a month at a local university, which was his first job, to creating a net worth of $51.5 billion, Jack Ma has established himself as an influential figure in the startup businesses sphere.

Failure

Jack Ma dealt with a number of failures all his life. Starting from his school days, Ma failed his final exams thrice before passing. He even failed the entrance exams for colleges before getting in Huangzhou Normal University.

Along with his educational phase, his early entrepreneurial ventures were a disaster too. He failed in two of his initial internet ventures and made it in his third chance. Alibaba, his third company, took off and created a buzz in the e-commerce industry with a legendary IPO by setting a world record as the biggest offering in the history of business.

This explains that all these failures didn’t stop him in any way from dreaming bigger rather taught him to value his work more.

What is ARTPARK Innovation Program?

ARTPARK Innovation Program is launched by Bangalore-based non-profit organisation, AI & Robotics Technology Park (ARTPARK), offering technological solutions to social problems in India.

Top notch universities usually fail in converting their academic research into market-ready products and services. ARTPARK aims to bridge this transitional gap between innovations developed in top and renowned universities and deploy those technological innovations to tackle issues in India.

The programme also has a mission to support innovative ideas, help to productize innovation, get external benefactors for the organisations who expertise in product designing, selling and marketing. It will also provide the startups with investors for seed funding to get them started.

What Does it Plan to do?

The programme is planning to grow the AI & Robotics innovation ecosystem in India by creating or working with existing startups. The programme has aligned with the $100 million venture fund for supporting startups in the artificial intelligence and robotics sector.

It also plans to uplift the healthcare, education, mobility, infrastructure, agriculture, retail and cyber-security problems in India and globally. The programme will also facilitate students and professionals with a proper training in advancing their skills and knowledge regarding this sector. It will also develop products like:

• DataSetu– Creating a data sharing ecosystem and marketplace that will boost the AI applications and solutions.
• BhashaSetu– Enabling Indic language translation to expand the participation level in the economic growth of the country, regardless of languages.
• Avtaar Robotics– Allowing emotive robotic nurses to transport healthcare professionals’ skills across the globe.
• Akashmarg– Roads in the sky, like Drone Skyways, for autonomous drones.

Along with the technology-led economic growth and innovation in the startup ecosystem in India, the programme plans to aid the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

In 2012, two humble coding interns at Yahoo kept running into the same issues over and over again. Working out of their Bengaluru-based office,  Ankit Sobti and Abhinav Asthana had one key job – to take Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and convert them into a shareable format that developers could use in their projects. Doesn’t sound very simple, does it? 

Well, amidst this complicated procedure, the duo found a solution to many coders problems, and thus began the inception of Postman, the collaboration platform for API development.

The Birth of Postman 

To begin with, let us understand what an API is. Application Programming Interface – API – is a software intermediary that, in simple words, allows two applications to talk to each other. When you open an application on your phone, any type of process or service from that app requires an API to function. It works as a messenger between the app from your phone to the server’s mainframe wherever it is. 

For the founders, learning how the APIs worked was a complex process. Testing and debugging APIs was also a pain for the production team. They had to start over every time an API was changed or updated.  

The duo figured out that there were a lot of communication issues when it came to API testing. However, they failed to reach a consensus or a probable solution. The same issue erupted a few years later at Asthana’s first start-up TeliportMe, a social media platform. 

The duo was then joined by Abhijit Kane, the third co-founder of Postman. This team of three was building a front-end architecture of their app, and that’s when they had to work with a complicated API and needed to exchange details in the process. However, they ran into the same communication issue and failed to find a solution.  

This became the first building block for the trio’s venture. Collating all the previous and current issues, the founders had realised that the tools to support API development were missing. They started noting down the codes to solve the issue (making API testing easier) and posted it on the Chrome Webstore; things took off from there. Google reached out to the team and appreciated the Postman tool. Thereafter, they featured it on the homepage of the Chrome store, which gave the start-up a fantastic visibility and the needed kickstart.

A Tech Startup is an organization whose main intent is to bring in new technologies and services into the market for hassle-free experiences for the enterprises. One of the rising pioneers in the tech startup sphere is the Gurgaon based new-age video tech company, MultiTv.

What is MultiTv and How Video Tech Space is Currently Working?

MultiTv is a one stop Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), offering an OTT video platform with an end-to-end video solution targeting B2B businesses, Enterprises, Media and Telecom sectors and also retailers and brands. In the post COVID world, technology has taken a staggering and quite irreversible position in the business world. As the market for video technology is vast, companies have realized that to scale all around the world and to stay on top in the market, they need to put resources into video tech. Consumers are more inclined towards the live and personalized experience videos now which is pushing these enterprises to adapt and innovate into the video tech space.

Enterprise technology and Information Technology (IT) businesses in India have been the target of numerous regulations. When it just seems like one regulation is out the door, another one takes it place, restricting the movement and growth of the enterprise tech Industry. These regulations are especially hard on start-ups because their resources are limited to begin with, and innovating becomes close to impossible with all the rules in place.

Enterprise tech start-ups in India are scaling up rapidly. Mainly because their products and services are fulfilling the market need where tech giants need assistance. 

The Agritech sector is all charged up. Not only are funding and investments coming in from all sides, the perception of what farming and agriculture has typically been like has dramatically changed in less than a year. Now when you think agriculture, the image of a debt ridden farmer with his hands praying upwards for the rains no longer comes to mind. 

Agritech’s powerful combination of technology and innovation has managed to make the troubles of the Agriculture sector a thing of the past. Add to that, the changes in policies that work to the benefit of farmers are proving to be beneficial for Agritech start-ups. The Agritech sector has seen some of the most innovative products and services including but not restricted to Farming Technology solutions, B2B agriculture marketplaces, farm-to-fork produce, etc. 

Bollywood actresses these days represent the women of India, women who make and handle their own money. In the past, several celebrities turned bankrupt due to their extravagant lifestyle. However, today’s women know how to handle their money. While some try their hands in entrepreneurship, some have become investors. With the booming start-ups in the country, actresses show their keen interest in betting on start-ups.

The top Indian actresses who invested in start-ups

Kajal Aggrawal
Kajal is a popular face in both Tollywood and Bollywood. The actress wore the investing hat by funding a game start-up, OKIE Gaming. The start-up is a gaming platform that allows users to indulge in games like Smart Housie, Rummy, Smart Number Quiz, Fantasy Cricket and many more. Kajal is reportedly a 15% stakeholder in the start-up and also a board member. The booming gaming industry in the country got her keen interest.

Deepika Padukone
The global icon, Deepika Padukone played her cards right with investment in Bellatrix Aerospace, a Bangalore-based space tech start-up. The start-up has done some path-breaking in the space industry with their technology being cost-effective and eco-friendly too. Winning the National Award, they have been working closely with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The actress has also reportedly invested in Drum Foods International Pvt. Ltd. The company is the maker of the yoghurt brand, Epigamia which she endorses as well.

The present time is a boiling pot for technology start-ups. Mainly because the disruption brought about by the pandemic has forced all industries to fall back on technology, whether they are ready for it, or not.

These industries need to do a rehaul of their operations, and worker skillset to improve engagement with technology. This is where job morphing will occur where the non-technical workforce is upskilled and morphed to create a technologically sound workforce.

Professional networking moved to the technology space when the pandemic commenced. While most industries and companies have easily been able to adopt technology with just a few speed bumps to report, a few are still struggling to fall in line.

The financial services sector has absorbed digital technology well and this has enabled them to easily overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic. A good example is ‘Slice’, a Bengaluru-based Fintech start-up which managed to achieve 100% growth in 2020 despite the pandemic. It recently declared an annualised gross transaction volume (GTV) of INR 1600 Cr and has also raised a capital of $33 million.

EdTech is one sector where networking mainly relies on technology and the need for lifelike interactions is strongly felt. For instance, teachers in the EdTech sector need hands-on training on advanced tools to be able to conduct lifelike classes smoothly on them.

Just like Fintech, Manufacturing has done pretty well in adapting to technology and morphing its workforce jobs with tech capabilities.

On the other hand, the healthcare sector has already failed to assign enough healthcare workers during the pandemic and this problem is continuing. Technology start-ups have already seeped in to help them counter this problem.