In the short history of China’s Internet industry, Alibaba became one of the icons, with a story that is now the stuff of corporate legend. Launched in 1999 by one-time English teacher Jack Ma and 17 of his friends, former colleagues and students in a small apartment in Hangzhou, it has become one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, serving more than 900 million active users on its platforms called Taobao and Tmall.

It reinvented the logistics business, enabling packages to be delivered within three days to locations over 2,400km away and within 10 minutes in the same city, and pioneered cloud computing in China, where it is the biggest provider. It also runs Alipay, the country’s largest payment platform, which is part of its fintech arm, Ant Financial.