Kisah Dan Bagaimana CEO Amazon Berjaya Menjadi Manusia Kedua Terkaya Dunia

Akhirnya Jeff Bezos boleh menghembus nafas lega selepas syarikat yang dibangunkannya pada 22 tahun lepas telah berjaya mencatat keuntungan yang konsisten selepas mengalami detik yang sukar pada sedekad pertama penubuhan. Lebih manis apabila beliau sendiri pada minggu ini berjaya menjadi manusia kedua terkaya dunia.



Antara faktor terbesar dalam peningkatan kekayaan Jeff Bezos adalah disebabkan peningkatan saham Amazon yang melonjak sehingga 50% sejak beberapa tahun yang lepas. Ditambah pula dengan kekayaan yang sedia ada serta inovasi terbaru daripada beliau sendiri, tidak hairanlah tempat Warren Buffett kini diganti dengan nama yang baru.

Jika anda fikirkan bisnes Amazon sekadar menjual barangan secara online anda mungkin silap. Berdasarkan beberapa tahun yang lepas sahaja, Jeff Bezos telah menambah pelbagai lagi model bisnes buat Amazon termasuk sistem cloud computing Amazon yang dinamakan sebagai AWS.
Amazon juga dikhabarkan telah mengubah tabiat pembelian pengguna mendapatkan barangan runcit dengan perkenalan Amazon Go. Konsepnya mudah. Pengguna tidak lagi perlu  beratur dan membayar di kaunter. Hanya ambil dan go! Segala pembayaran bakal diselesaikan sejurus anda keluar daripada Amazon Go Store.

Kebergantungan Amazon Online Store tidak hanya tertakluk kepada servis kurier sedia ada, Jeff Bezos turut memperkenalkan sistem penghantaran menggunakan dron.
Alasannya mudah, bagi membolehkan pengguna menerima 30 minit selepas pesanan dibuat. Tiada lagi penantian sehingga hari esok. Saya fikir kalau sistem bisnes seperti ini ada di Malaysia mesti kaki shopping online yang paling excited. Anda boleh ikuti kisah dron Amazon Prime ini di sini.




Terbaru, Jeff Bezos bakal membuka sebuah lagi cabang bisnes terbaru beliau dibawah kendalian syarikat Blue Origin. Bisnes terbaru beliau yang bakal bermula 2018 ini membolehkan orang ramai untuk ke angkasa lepas bagi merasai sendiri pengalaman berada di tempat zero gravity. Dianggarkan harga bagi seorang penumpang bakal mula ditawarkan dengan harga bermula $250,000 USD (~RM1.1 juta). 



Begitulah sedikit sebanyak mengenai individu yang berjaya menduduki tempat kedua sebagai manusia terkaya dunia. Berjaya mengoptimasikan sesebuah bisnes, cipta lagi sebuah bisnes yang baru. Soal modal, gunakan prinsip ‘money make money‘ atau kongsikan share syarikat kepada orang kepentingan syarikat agar syarikat dapat terus maju dan berkembang.

Berdasarkan laporan daripada Blomberg, kekayaan Jeff Bezos kini dinilai pada anggaran $75.6 billion mengatasi dua pencabar terdekat iaitu Warren Buffett dan Amancio Ortega yang masing-masing dinilai pada dengan kekayaan $75.5 bilion dan $74.1 billion. Bill Gates terus kekal sebagai manusia terkaya dunia dengan nilai kekayaan $86 billion meskipun sudah melepaskan pecahan saham yang besar di dalam Microsoft

@the vocket

SIA to honour sale of business-class tickets at economy rates

Singapore Airlines (SIA) said Monday it would honour hundreds of business-class tickets sold wrongly at economy fares to ensure travellers' plans are not disrupted.

The airline said in a statement it was investigating the cause of the erroneous sales which saw "business-class booking able to be made at an outdated economy-class fare level".

The tickets involved 900 ticketed segments -- or journeys between two airports -- sold by Australian travel agents.

Australian news reports said they involved flights between Singapore and European destinations.

"To ensure no disruption to our customers' travel plans, Singapore Airlines wishes to advise that it will honour all affected bookings," SIA said, without giving a figure for the number of passengers affected.

Singapore's Straits Times said in an online report Monday customers who had purchased the tickets would be flying business class "for tickets that were as much as US$4,200 cheaper than what they should have been".

AFP News 

admin: one of good customer services

'Candy Crush' maker sees up to $7.6 billion IPO valuation

(Reuters) - King Digital Entertainment Plc, maker of hit mobile phone game "Candy Crush Saga", expects to be worth up to $7.6 billion when it goes public this month in the United States, amid concerns about its over reliance on the game.

King will hope to benefit from its focus on the estimated $17 billion market for mobile game apps and avoid the fate of rivals such as Zynga Inc, which has struggled to make its games as popular on phones as they are online.

"Candy Crush," which involves moving candies to make a line of three in the same color, was the most downloaded free app and top revenue-grossing app in 2013. The game accounts for nearly three-quarters of King's revenue.

Dublin-based King said on Wednesday it expects to price its IPO at $21-$24 per share, valuing it at up to $7.6 billion - slightly higher than Hasbro Inc, the 90-year old maker of Monopoly, Scrabble and Nerf.

"I think the bankers have priced the deal in a way so that initial investors can realize a first-day pop in the stock," said Josef Schuster, founder of IPOX Schuster, a Chicago-based IPO research and investment house.

Twitter Inc's successful IPO in November and a surge in Facebook Inc's shares have fueled speculation that other tech firms could go public, including music-streaming service Spotify, lodging website AirBnB and mobile payments company Square.

However, Schuster and other analysts questioned if King could maintain its breakneck growth rate.

"I think the valuation of a P/E ratio of 13 for a high-growth company is indeed reflecting a skepticism about the ability to continue growing at such a rapid pace," said Jay Ritter, a professor and IPO expert at the University of Florida.

"The ability to come up with future games and get people to pay for the game is a big question mark."

Riccardo Zacconi, who has led King since co-founding the company in Sweden in 2003, will hold a 9.5 percent stake in King after the IPO. Zacconi, 47, worked with online dating site uDate.com Ltd till it was bought by InterActive Corp in 2002.

ANOTHER ZYNGA?

"Candy Crush" launched on Facebook in April 2012. The game was released on Apple devices in November that year, followed by an app for Android devices a month later.

The game has been downloaded more than 500 million times since its launch. The basic games are free, but players must pay for add-ons or extra "lives".

Such stellar popularity has helped King's revenue grow to $602 million in the fourth quarter of 2013 from $22 million in the first quarter of 2012.

But most of that growth was fueled by "Candy Crush" rather than any of the 180 games King provides through mobile phones, Facebook and its own website.

King, which had 665 employees at December 31, has focused on launching more games on mobile platforms, a market that analysts expect will grow to $17 billion this year from just $6 billion in 2010.

Zynga's stock price has halved since its IPO in 2011 as the popularity of "Farmville" waned, while Finland's Rovio has struggled to replicate the success of "Angry Birds".

Zynga acquired mobile game developer NaturalMotion for $527 million and cut over 300 jobs this year, in an effort to narrow its focus to mobile gaming.

To be sure, King's revenue for the quarter ended December 31 declined 3 percent from the preceding quarter, which the company said was due to a fall in "Candy Crush" gross bookings.

However, bookings rose for its other games such as "Pet Rescue Saga" and "Farm Heroes Saga". About 73 percent of total bookings in the quarter came from mobile users.

King's five games for mobiles have drawn a "substantial fan base" Zacconi said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (http://r.reuters.com/bar57v).

"The opportunity in front of us is exciting: mobile usage is exploding and games are commanding the lion's share of time spent."

NYSE DEBUT

King's IPO is scheduled to be priced on March 25, two underwriters told Reuters. The stock will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "KING" on March 26.

Of the 22.2 million shares on sale in the offering, the company will sell 15.5 million, while stockholders, including Apax Ventures, will sell 6.7 million shares, King said.

Unlike most other tech companies that have gone public recently, King is profitable, has no debt and generated positive cash flow from operations for each of the last nine years. It posted profit before tax of $714.3 million in 2013.

In February, an average of 144 million daily active users played the company's games more than 1.4 billion times per day.

At the top-end of the planned range, the IPO will raise as much as $532.8 million, slightly more than the $500 million placeholder figure it disclosed in its first public filing in February.

Entities related to Apax will own 44.2 percent of the company following the offering, according to the IPO filing.

JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and BofA Merrill Lynch are lead underwriters for the offering.

(Additional reporting by Neha Dimri in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel and Savio D'Souza)

@Reuters