Home Travel News An Interview With Cindy Chow – Let’s Talk About Entrepreneurship

An Interview With Cindy Chow – Let’s Talk About Entrepreneurship

An Interview With Cindy Chow - Let’s Talk About Entrepreneurship
6 min.

Cindy Chow is the senior executive director of Alibaba entrepreneurs fund. She also worked as Senior Director of Finance for Alibaba, one of the world’s largest retailer and eCommerce companies. As one of the largest corporations globally, she ran the international finance front, which is a challenging but meaningful task. Cindy has joined us for a new Hotelmize Talks edition. In this new episode, Dor Krubiner, CEO of Hotelmize, talks with Cindy about entrepreneurship, startups and her work experience while working for Alibaba

Her new and fascinating project is the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, an organization that has a great impact on the young society in Hong Kong. She gave us a little insight into the world of international finance, entrepreneurship and her work experience at the beginning of this giant company, as well as her current position where she helps entrepreneurs.

“Participating in the growth of a company that not many people know about to a company that practically everyone in the world is aware of the substantial achievement – and I’m proud of it.”– Cindy Chow

China has grown a lot in the past few decades, primarily due to opening up to the international market. From a relatively unknown company back in 1999, in a little over two decades, Alibaba has grown to the 31st-largest public company in the world – and that’s because of entrepreneurship.

Cindy had played a crucial role in the success of Alibaba, as she was a part of the company when it was a startup. Now she does the same in Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, a not-for-profit initiative launched back in 2015 by Jack Ma, co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, to encourage entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas. 

Alibaba is a company that knows the importance of entrepreneurship and its goal is to aid young entrepreneurs in achieving their vision

“Entrepreneurship is embedded in Alibaba’s DNA – it is all about innovation and creativity. We believe that entrepreneurship can be nurtured, and that’s why Alibaba invests in startups and helps them grow. By doing so, we hope to groom successful companies to become models for other aspiring entrepreneurs.“ told us Cindy during the interview.- Cindy Chow

Entrepreneurship has changed the world in more ways than one. It stimulates innovation, drives the development of new solutions and companies, and by supporting it, the world becomes a better place. New business applications have gone up 40%. Entrepreneurship has also shifted in its entirety to a more productive, inclusive, and better environment that empowers equality and women, eliminating exclusion, and China is known for supporting women in the workplace.

Alibaba’s vision is to stimulate entrepreneurship as much as possible for the benefit of the global market. By supporting startups, Alibaba believes that they are building models.

With the advent of COVID-19, the global market has experienced its biggest hit since the 2008 global financial crisis, and it has reflected on entrepreneurs as a whole. Many small businesses disappeared during the pandemic, which is precisely why larger corporations such as Alibaba invest time, support, and resources to stimulate the growth of smaller companies and entrepreneurship as a whole.

“Hopefully, they (entrepreneurs) will be inspired by the support from Alibaba group, even in spite of the global pandemic,” Miss Chow commented.

One thing that the pandemic is good for is boosting creativity. When people are stuck at home, as most are at this point, they tend to think of innovative ideas that could one day wind up changing the world.

The Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund has been working on different projects during the last six years. The most successful one is this initiative called the Jumpstarter Program 

JUMPSTARTER 2021 became the world’s largest online startup contest. The selected pitch can win a 4 million USD investment. On March 22nd, the finalists pitched their ideas. This is a major opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors and it aims to bring together the most amazing roster of entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas.

Entrepreneurs come in all ages, which is why companies such as Alibaba work to support and stimulate growth in all innovators – not just the ones with an existing portfolio. Alibaba wants to educate younger entrepreneurs, so they opened up their Jumpstarter program to younger generations. By supporting competitions, contests and providing adequate rewards, companies can promote future business leaders’ growth and development.

“We’ve extended our support to online competitions for young innovators, and the response is good. The quality is amazing, especially because they’re so creative. Young entrepreneurs have a lot of concern about improving society as a whole – giving their ideas a purpose, sustainability, and quality,” as Cindy explained during our Hotemize Talks interview.

You can watch the full interview below:
—-

Dor and Cindy also commented on this during the conversation saying that small startups are perfect role models, as they tend to turn into big companies in a matter of years. It’s good for the economy, and supporting them is imperative to improving society as we know. Companies like Alibaba are continually looking at new ways to help the community, even during the turbulent times of the global SARS-COV-2 pandemic.

Cindy explained that Alibaba had spent 2019 going to different places and promoting their competitions to support entrepreneurs, lining the forums with industry-leading professionals.

“Every day counts for startups, and in only ten days, we’ve moved all of our physical events to the internet. The first aim was to make the largest online pitch competition, and it was very successfully run, even though it was assembled in only ten days. We don’t think that we should stop in 2021, so despite the challenges and having everything online, we’ll continue to do what we think is important.”

On the 8th of March, the world celebrated International Women’s Day. In the interview, one of the topics was that equality and social impact seem to be trending topics among young entrepreneurs and empower women entrepreneurs.

With the global corporate world’s future looking as bright as it is, new companies, startups, and entrepreneurs must receive the support they need and deserve from well-established companies like Alibaba.Alibaba has a real commitment with their community to help them with funds and inspire other generations and create a new paradigm on how to develop a professional career.

Make sure to watch the interview in its entirety below, as you don’t want to miss out on any important details about entrepreneurship during the pandemic and what big companies are doing to help solve the many issues that plague it.

Share this article

Subscribe to
our newsletter

Yay! You are now
subscribed to our
newsletter

↑ Back to top

Mize is the leading hotel booking optimization solution in the world. With over 170 partners using our fintech products, Mize creates new extra profit for the hotel booking industry using its fully automated proprietary technology and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue across its suite of products for its partners. Mize was founded in 2016 with its headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices worldwide.

Learn more

Related Posts

Mize x wbe.travel webinar recap

Mize x wbe.travel webinar recap

6 min. Last month, we had the pleasure of co-hosting a travel-tech webinar with wbe.travel.  Our partner wbe.travel, the European-based company provides a complete, robust software suite, hosted in the cloud, built for travel companies such as DMCs, TMCs, Travel Agencies, Wholesalers, and Niched travel businesses. Their off-the-shelf software suite covers a full range of […]

SATTE 2023 – Everything you need to know

SATTE 2023 – Everything you need to know.

2 min. This year, at the India Expo Centre, Greater Noida, SATTE 2023 will commence! Attendees at SATTE 2023 this year will have the chance to interact with over 1,000 exhibitors on the convention floor, and gain knowledge from the major players in the travel industry.  India is now standing as the 10th highest-traveled country […]

FITUR Madrid 2023…A Success!

FITUR Madrid 2023…A Success!

3 min. This year, FITUR Madrid 2023 brought the travel technology industry together on a massive scale. The event hosted more than 222,000 attendees, which is almost double last year’s attendance of 111,193. There were also about 8,500 companies from 131 countries in attendance, inside 8 different pavilions.  At this conference, firms from all around […]