As kids, we have been told several stories of determination and hard work, stories that left us awestruck and amazed. Adding to this list, or perhaps revisiting it, let’s look at the life of a man who has taken the world economy and the entire Chinese internet industry by storm.

Jack Ma, the Founder of Alibaba Group, his net worth is estimated to be US$41.8 billion, making him the richest person in Asia and 14th in the world. He is also one of the world’s most visible icons in business and entrepreneurship, and was ranked second in Fortune Magazine’s ‘World’s 50 Greatest Leaders List.’

Ma certainly wasn’t hit by success overnight. An exemplar of humility and hard work, he has an interesting story behind his success. Perhaps the most exceptional quality that he possessed was an ability to overcome failure gracefully. After all, how many of us keep our optimism intact in the face of constant failure? Here are the multiple failures that Jack Ma faced on the road to success:

He was a poor student

In his early childhood, Ma failed his primary school examination twice, his middle school exams thrice, and his university entrance exams thrice before joining Hangzhou Normal University.

In his college entrance exam, he got an appalling score of less than one percent in the math portion of his college entrance exam. “I am not good at math, have never studied management, and still cannot read accounting reports,” he once remarked.

But none of this stopped him from reaching where he is today.

He was rejected by multiple jobs

Ma’s persistence and determination is exemplified by the fact that he was rejected for 30 jobs and still kept trying. What’s more, he was the only one to be rejected out of 24 KFC applicants!

He was also one of the five applicants for a job in the police force and was the only one who got rejected after being told that he was “no good”.

He was rejected by Harvard 10 times

He wrote to Harvard 10 times and was rejected every single time. Anyone else would have felt dejected by then, but Jack Ma used these rejections as an opportunity to learn. If this isn’t optimism, then what is?

He was criticized for running an ‘unprofitable model’

In 1999, Ma created Alibaba with a group of friends but couldn’t convince Silicon Valley to fund it. At one point, Alibaba was just 18 months away from bankruptcy. For the first three years, Alibaba made zero revenue. In September 2014, Alibaba went public at $92.70 per share, making it the biggest US IPO in history.

Ma had no experience with computers or coding, but he was captivated by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the US in 1995. He had recently started a translation business and made the trip to help a Chinese firm recover a payment. Ma’s first online search was “beer,” but he was surprised to find that no Chinese beers turned up in the results. It was then that he decided to found an internet company for China.

Though his first two ventures failed, four years later he gathered 17 of his friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in his vision for an online marketplace he called “Alibaba.” The site allowed exporters to post product listings that customers could buy directly.

Soon, the service started to attract members from all over the world. By October 1999, the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank, a Japanese telecom company that also invests in technology companies. The team remained close-knit and scrappy. “We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up,” Ma said to a gathering of employees.

In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba in exchange for about a 40% stake in the company. This was huge for Alibaba — at the time it was trying to beat eBay in China — and it would eventually be an enormous win for Yahoo too, netting it $10 billion in Alibaba’s IPO alone.

Ma stepped down from his post as CEO in 2013, staying on as executive chairman. Alibaba went public September 19 2014. “Today what we got is not money. What we got is the trust from the people,” Ma told CNBC.

In 2009 and 2014, Ma was named one of Time‘s 100 most influential people. He was also chosen as one of ‘China’s Most Powerful People’ by Business Week. Ma is the first mainland Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes.

The thing about Jack Ma is that his success didn’t make him forget his humble beginnings. He never fails to pay respect to those for whom he owes his success.

In Jack Ma’s own words “If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.”

Jack ma will be visiting Kenya on 20th of this month where he is expected to address young Kenyan entrepreneurs at the University of Nairobi.