FROM KFC-REJECT TO WORLD'S 70TH RICHEST MAN: ALIBABA FOUNDER WHO WAS INSPIRED BY FORREST GUMP.

Jack Ma, 50, of Hangzhou, eastern China, founded web giant Alibaba from his tiny flat in China. The 50-year-old entrepreneur, who founded Alibaba with a group of 17 friends in 1999, had humble roots and taught English in a local school. But before his stratospheric rise to wealth and power at the head of his company, an internet giant which dominates the Chinese online economy, Ma couldn't even make it into a chicken shop. But, hoping to better his lot in the early 1990s he applied, and was turned down for, a slew of other jobs, including with a KFC in the city.

Ma's luck changed, however, when a job came up in 1995 which let him travel to the United States as a translator. While there he caught his first sight of a computer linked to the internet - which began a chain of events which would lead to him joining the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos in the ranks of those made fabulously wealthy by new technology. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...