Alhamdulillah, we have safely arrived back in Malaysia after 12 days of hustle and training with Alibaba Business School under the Youth E-Commerce Program 2018 organized by the Alibaba Group and Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE). We have learnt a lot this past weeks and we will gladly share our experiences with our entrepreneur friends in Malaysia.
We departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on the 19th of January 2018. Out of hundreds of participants, only 20 students were selected including us two. It was an exciting experience as it is our first time to land our feet in China. Hangzhou is a really beautiful and advance city in terms of data technology. We went there during the winter season and we were blessed as we got to experience snow for the first time in our life! People around here told us that Hangzhou haven’t experience any snow for the past 8 years, so we were really blessed.
The most interesting challenge that we have faced in China is in terms of communication or language. Not everyone around here speaks English, so we have to adapt to the surrounding. We learnt simple words on how to greet people, how to say thank you and a bit of communication so that we can survive whilst in Hangzhou.
We were sent to the Alibaba Business school for 10 days, and we have learnt a lot on the expanding technology in China and also the history of Alibaba itself. On the first day we were introduced to the Alibaba Business School that was not far from our hotel. I am really amazed by their culture and discipline. We were given a talk by the Dean on the 4 greatest inventions in China which is the payment system, shared bike, e-commerce and also bullet train.
On the second day, we learnt about B2B e-commerce in greater depth which is Alibaba.com. We learnt on how we can get inquiries from customers upon our business. To make it short, we need to have a professional web design, higher traffic, verification with trust, unlimited product posting, more orders, and higher product exposure. I was really amazed that Asia Pacific has the highest potential Digital Buyer which is 711.1 million but that is only 25.5% of the population there and that is already half of the contribution to global e-commerce.
On the third day, we went to another Alibaba Business School quite far from our hotel to learn more on the management of Alibaba. They focused on to build the team first and to make the customer happy as Jack Ma Always said to them, “Customer first, Employee second, Shareholders third”. During the class, I finally understand all the position that one should have in an organization and their roles.
We learnt about TaoBao on the fourth day which is an B2C e-commerce website of Alibaba Group. This website defeated E-bay when they wanted to penetrate the China market. Because of TaoBao give more value to the customer in China and really understand the market, they won the heart of China internet users. We also were exposed to the new e-commerce in china which is Tmall and Tmall global which focus more on bringing imported item and product into china as the demand is getting higher every day.
After spending 10 days training with Alibaba Business school, I realized that Alibaba it not just an E-commerce Company. Yes, we have learnt every single E-commerce that Alibaba has built and we know how to differentiate it from each other as each one caters to a specific market. But we also learnt a lot on the ecosystem of Alibaba itself to make Alibaba Group Sustain for 102 years, so it can last for 3 centuries as aimed by Jack Ma.
There is a lot of potential technology that we can bring back to Malaysia, but it depends on how can we create the culture here in Malaysia to adapt with the advance technology development in china. We would like to thank MOHE, Alibaba Group and also UTM especially UTM XCITE for giving us this amazing experience to us young entrepreneur. Looking forward for The Next Journey, InsyaAllah.
Written by Muhammad Luqman Wafi Abd Muiz, 1st Year, FKE, 2018
