Jack Ma Mentors Four Startup Founders From India, Sharing His Mantra For Success In Digital Age

Jack Ma is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. And he has a lot of knowledge to share to help young people become successful in their own right, as can be witnessed by his several motivational videos.

In order to fulfill this mission, he met 38 entrepreneurs from 11 Asian countries, four of which were from India. The goal was to let them learn through each other's shared wisdom as much as passing down nuggets of accumulated knowledge from his early days of starting Alibaba.

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NowFloats, Healthy Buddha, Grozip and Zefo are the four lucky Indian startups selected to be mentored by Alibaba's Jack Ma late last year.

Priceless experience

As per Ronak Samantray, Co-Founder, NowFloats, "Getting to know Alibaba from that close really blew my mind. Got a chance to interact with the co- founders of Alibaba, and hearing about their journey and the challenges they faced was priceless."

Before starting NowFloats, Ronak worked for Microsoft and also featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Enterprise Tech. A coder at heart, with NowFloats, he's focused on enabling 23 million merchants (non-commodity and services) to be able to build their own brand online -- just like Jack Ma did with Alibaba.

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Anurag Dalmia, Co-Founder, Healthy Buddha couldn't believe his good fortune. "I have been personally reading about and following Jack Ma, so this eFounders Fellowship Program fit perfectly well into my scheme of things," he says.

An entrepreneur for over 11 years, Anurag's Healthy Buddha was born out of a necessity to provide healthy chemical-free food for our kids. Apart from understanding the nuances of building a business, Dalmia also learnt a fundamental core value as an entrepreneur.

"Be kind and compassionate," he recollects, "Jack¡¯s strong belief stems from doing business with a heart and while it may be challenging, but definitely it is the most rewarding."

Learning from China

"China is huge and the way they have built innovation for startups has been inspiring for all entrepreneurs across the world," says Anand Kumar Mishra, Founder, Grozip. Before starting Grozip -- a premium online convenience store for hyperlocal needs -- Anand worked with Google Startup Ecosystem under the Google Business Group program as a Community Manager, organizing over 100 entrepreneurship focused events.

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"Our training module and live interactions were with the leadership team of Alibaba along with Jack Ma, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time, who not only created Alibaba from scratch but has also shown the path to many companies all over the world including India to venture into online marketing."

Cherry on the cake? "Meeting Jack Ma and understanding Alibaba Group¡¯s growth story was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me as a founder," says Anand.

This thought is echoed by Rohit Ramasubramanian, Founder, Zefo. He says, "To learn about a country that India has always been in the shadow of, and from the largest eCommerce company in the world was an unmissable opportunity."

"We got to learn about the early years of Alibaba, the importance of culture, the power of a platform etc. first hand," he mentions. "Hopefully, some of the best aspects of these, we will see in India in the next decade."