Page 24 - Forbes India (December 2015)

powerful people jack ma

aliBaBa

and The

40,000

ThieVes

The world’s biggest online retailer
courses with an unprecedented torrent of
counterfeit and sham goods, and neither
the big brands, the Chinese government
nor US pressure can do much about it.
Jack Ma, the most powerful businessman
in Asia, can. But shutting down the fakes
would undermine his Alibaba empire

By MichAEL SchUMAN

e warned: Jack Ma, the Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. There’s
man who oversees the no chance, he insists, of settling.
world’s largest online “I would [rather] lose the case,
B retailer and whom Forbes lose the money,” says Ma. “But we
ranks as the 22nd most powerful would gain our dignity and respect.”
person in the world, doesn’t like That is true if he means respect in
lawyers. Especially those attacking the eyes of the hundreds of thousands
the very underpinnings of the $200 of small Chinese entrepreneurs
billion empire he’s built. As rail-thin who’ve made a living on Alibaba’s
as ever, Ma almost leaps off the sofa online bazaar, called Taobao. To Ma,
in his Hangzhou office in China whose Chinese retail sites handle five
when talking about the fancy New times the volume of eBay—last year
York attorneys who have sued him $394 billion of, well, everything—these
for trademark infringement and sellers are his lifeblood. To the sellers,
trafficking in counterfeits on behalf Ma is a hero of capitalism, offering
of their client, Kering, the French them a path to the middle class. In
luxury goods conglomerate that owns the centre of this social compact,

24 | FORBES INDIA DECEMBER 11, 2015