This photograph taken on July 26, 2018 exhibits founding father of e-commerce firm Temu, often known as Pinduoduo, Colin Huang delivering a speech throughout the launch of the corporate’s preliminary public providing in Shanghai. E-commerce tycoon Colin Huang has turn into China’s richest man, an index confirmed on August 9, 2024, capping an ascent for the previous Google worker whose buying website Temu has sucked in shoppers with its low costs and omnipotent algorithms. (Photograph by CNS / AFP) / China OUT
Beijing, China — E-commerce tycoon Colin Huang has turn into China’s richest man, an index confirmed Friday, capping an ascent for the previous Google worker whose buying website Temu has sucked in shoppers with its low costs and omnipotent algorithms.
Huang, the founding father of PDD Holdings — which owns Temu and Chinese language retail app Pinduoduo — is now value $48.6 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index stated.
He overtakes Zhong Shanshan, the boss of beverage firm Nongfu Spring who had topped the listing since April 2021, because the world’s twenty fifth wealthiest particular person and the richest in China.
READ: Rise of fast-fashion Shein, Temu roils world air cargo trade
Shut behind them is Ma Huateng, generally known as Pony Ma — head of tech big Tencent, whose WeChat is commonly described as China’s “all the things app”.
And in fourth place is Zhang Yiming, founding father of Bytedance, which owns the massively well-liked TikTok video sharing platform.
Huang, born in 1980 within the jap Chinese language metropolis of Hangzhou, was a teenage maths whizz and a former worker of Google China.
In 2015 he based on-line buying website Pinduoduo, which blossomed into one in all China’s most profitable e-commerce empires — rivalling Jack Ma’s Alibaba.
The app lured in shoppers with big reductions and an enormous array of merchandise, providing typically staggeringly low costs in a fiercely aggressive discipline.
Its abroad iteration Temu launched in 2022 in the US, the place it amassed a loyal shopper base with ultra-low-cost items made and shipped from China.
READ: Temu proprietor Pinduoduo says triples internet revenue in first quarter
Its success dovetailed with persistent excessive inflation that has pushed cost-conscious shoppers to hunt for bargains, and it has since taken off in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.
Regardless of solely arriving in Europe final 12 months, Temu has stated it has on common round 75 million month-to-month lively customers within the area.
However its large success had drawn accusations of unfair business practices and lax security requirements.
This 12 months, shopper teams in Europe accused Temu of manipulating buyers into spending more cash, distorting their means to make “free and knowledgeable choices”.
And in April, South Korean regulators opened an investigation into Temu on suspicion of false promoting and unfair practices.
Final month, tons of of retailers in China demonstrated at an affiliated workplace within the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, alleging unfair therapy within the sale of their merchandise on the platform.
However that has carried out little to dent the success of the agency, with PDD Holdings saying in Could that first-quarter internet revenue had greater than tripled year-on-year.
Your subscription couldn’t be saved. Please strive once more.
Your subscription has been profitable.
The agency’s US-listed shares closed at $138.02 apiece on Thursday, giving it a market capitalisation of $191.68 billion.
