MA HUATENG – BILLIONAIRE TECH CEO OF TENCENT FAME AND CHINA’S RICHEST MAN

Learning from the greatest business leaders of the world

Ma Huateng (born on October 29, 1971), is a Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tencent, one of the largest Internet and technology companies in the world.

The company controls China’s biggest mobile instant messaging service and its subsidiaries provide media, entertainment, payment systems, smartphones, Internet-related services, value-added services and online advertising services, both in China and globally.

In 2007, 2014 and 2018, the Time magazine called him one of the world’s most influential people. In 2017, Fortune ranked him as among the top businessmen of the year. As of August 2019, he is China’s richest man and the 20th wealthiest in the world, with a net worth of US $ 37.7 billion.

Huateng was born into a humble household. His father moved to Shenzhen to work as a port manager when Huateng was quite young. Huateng completed his remaining schooling from there and found a keen interest in computer technologies.

Huateng enrolled at Shenzhen University in 1989. He studied computer science and graduated with a BS degree in 1993. Thereafter, he started working at a telecommunications company, which was engaged in the supply of communication services and products. After obtaining initial experience, Huateng left the company and worked at the research and development department of another Internet and telecommunications company for a while.

Simultaneously, he also kept toying with the idea of starting his own company and got in touch with four of his classmates to make his business dreams come true. In 1998, Huateng and his friends laid the foundation of the company Tencent. The initial funding for the company came via venture capitalists.

When he thought about launching the first product, Huateng recalled attending an event where ICQ, the world’s first instant messaging service, was being launched. He thought of launching something similar for the Chinese market. In February 1999, Huateng officially unveiled QQ, an instant messaging service.

However, the company was initially not as successful as Huateng thought it would be. It registered practically no profit in its first three years. Despite the company not performing as good, the product was an immediate hit with the Chinese people. Experiencing a substantial growth, the company looked for more investors to bear their operational costs.

Tencent had already sunk its teeth in the Chinese telecommunications market but in order to show profit and to avoid takeovers by bigger companies, the company expanded its operations. Qq.com, the company’s own portal, was launched in 2003. This was regarded as Tencent’s official foray into the online gaming market.

Within a year, Tencent’s success shot up rapidly. It became the largest instant messaging service provider by 2004, with a 74 percent stake in the Chinese market. The share market of Hong Kong listed Tencent. Soon, the company raised US $ 200 million, making Huateng one of the richest Chinese businessmen.

In 2004, Huateng’s sharp marketing brain invented many fresh ideas related to online gaming. It strengthened the company’s influence. Around the same time, Huateng thought of venturing into the e-commerce zone, another fast-growing and highly lucrative field.

In 2005, Huateng launched Paipai.com, a direct competitor to China’s biggest e-commerce platform, Alibaba.com. By then, Tencent had become a massive force to reckon with, in the field of Internet gaming, e-commerce, media, entertainment and instant messaging.

In 2011, Tencent had another major breakthrough when the company launched another instant messaging app, Weixin, known in English as Wechat. For the development of the app, Tencent took the same route as Bill Gates had taken for Microsoft.

The company created two teams to work on the product simultaneously. Over time, Wechat became the most popular instant messaging service in the world. Most of the credit of its success goes to its easy interface and the inclusion of paid and unpaid emoticons and ringtones.

The biggest chunk of Huateng’s profit came from online video games, which had become a major market in the 2010s, as Internet access had become easier by then. Tencent Games, a Tencent division, works toward the development of video games under Tencent Interactive Entertainment. Founded in 2003, Tencent Games became the biggest video game company in the world by 2018.

Huateng is married and has a daughter.