Alibaba, the world’s largest e-commerce company, is scheduled to debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday in a hotly anticipated public offering. The listing is the culmination of years of work by chairman Jack Ma.

Ma first listed his company in Hong Kong in 2007 raising nearly $1.7 billion and rocketing the company’s stock price up 135 percent over its listing price. The stock nearly tripled in value before it reversed direction and sank so low that the company de-listed it from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2012.

Investors say the forthcoming listing provides a gateway to the world’s largest concentration of internet shoppers, as it controls four-fifths of all e-commerce in China. Alibaba also reported in late August that it had 288 million combined buyers and sellers. CCTV America’s Cathy Yang reports.