On day one, Brian Wong, Vice President of the Alibaba group concluded his opening speech to class 7 of the Alibaba efounder’s program saying, he and the Alibaba team hoped that by the tenth day of the program, we would have bonded as a family and inspired to make a lasting change when we get back to Africa.
I represented Lucy.ng as a founder and I left the program with a bigger vision and more clarity of purpose. Entrepreneurship is truly a chance for sustainable development and growth. I met awesome people, with diverse cultures, languages and experiences with who I created a bond of family. It was a great experience, here are somethings that stood out and remained with me.
Validation:
There are many parallels with the Alibaba story from day one till date that resonates with us at Lucy.ng, I could relate to the story of the early days of pure grit and concrete pounding, the notebook for recording escrow payments that later became the giant Alipay. The Ying yang of certainty and chaos, the tests of fate i.e The 2002 SARS attack in China could have crumbled Alibaba in its early years but their resilience and ingenuity saw them through. The power of blind faith that’s the Jack Ma’s story all gave me a validation that we are on the right path at Lucy.ng.
Collaboration over competition:
The Alibaba group have created successful businesses by collaborating rather than competing, the perfect example is the CAIAINO, a 50 billion yuan ($7.7 billion) valuation company that was created in 2013 with 8 other companies. It was an answer to a pressing problem of logistics that grew more pronounced from the singles day shopping festival and as e-commerce market grew in China. Alibaba provided the platform and smart solutions to eight other delivery companies which created a better delivery solution for customers and the entire ecosystem. It’s the positive of inclusive development, we win when others win.
Data is king:
In the digital world, you can’t maximize potential without data, it is the building block of scale. I understood in theory but the practicality dawned on me, when I experienced it firsthand at scale. The Alibaba group prioritizes data and they invest resources in data gathering and analysis even before building. It runs as the life blood in Alibaba’s operations, products and its administration. This fact has been further engrained in my psyche and overall Lucy team.
Inclusion at scale: The power of scale is core to growth and defensibility of a digital business, and technology gives to anyone who cares to take advantage of that power. Among many other outstanding achievements regarding scale, Alibaba through their Taobao rural project helps millions of local rural farmers sell their produce to Chinese and global customers, the end to end solution they provide to these communities is transforming their lives significantly helping them sell more at higher margins.
It has also enabled sustenance of these villages by attracting a teeming youth population who now see opportunity in returning to their villages to live and do business. Our next phase at Lucy is scale, one city, and one country at a time across our motherland.
QR codes & Algorithms:
You can say China=QR code, it enables everything directly to payment, and the algorithms sort out the whole the giant maze. The CAIAINO logistics warehouse, where bots and human operate to get orders packaged and shipped on time. The underlying lesson in this is the power of technology and how it can transform our lives, it’s an exciting time for Africa, and we must build technology that will solve our biggest problems.
Sharing Economy:
A major impact of technology in China is the enabling of a sharing economy. People shop together and split prices, transport themselves, borrow umbrella’s etc. at way less than the cost if they were to own the assets by themselves. This is a model that will impact Africa’s low and middle income earners significantly. My team and I are creating a platform to enable a shared economy for critical needs in urban African cities. (Pricepally.com)
What’s your Tao?:
The foundation and the future of any enterprise that will leave a lasting legacy is built on this question. Pronounced DAO, the TAO is the essence of a venture, it is the reason entrepreneurs wake up in the morning and postpone sleep at night. It is a question beyond material wealth and success. It is the truth and the catalyst of a desired future.
Responsibility:
It is important to be responsible to yourself and to the ecosystem that supports us, no matter the businesses we build, if you and I don’t give back to improve the ecosystem, we will not be able to do more than the ecosystem allow, even more than support we need to build enablers for our ecosystem where they are lacking. Jack Ma and the Alibaba have had to spin off several businesses that were not originally planned but that they found while on the journey, a very significant one is the Ali cloud, which was a response to what they saw as a threat to their future as a company and the Chinese digital ecosystem. Today the Ali cloud literally powers all their innovation and without it, their ecosystem wouldn’t be as strong as it is today.
Hope:
The development in China is mind boggling from my Nigerian experience, everything works and at optimal. The infrastructure is solid and built to organize the billions of its citizens to live almost void of chaos, everything worked so well, at some point I missed the chaos of Lagos. The hope is that 20, 30 years ago China was like present day Nigeria, with fragmented provinces and a much smaller economy. Nigeria can be equally as great a nation, with a chance to do it quicker.
I sum my experience up with two quotes, one from Jack Ma and the other which I got walking to class in Hangzhou.
If not me, then who? If not now, then when? – Jack Ma.
It is blessed to do good, it is more blessed to do it at scale! – Luther Lawoyin