After several successful ventures in gaming and e-commerce, Collin Huang Fell ill and retired. There came a time when the young entrepreneur stayed at home for a year thinking about his next step.
Former Google engineer finally makes his debut PinduoduoAn e-commerce platform known for selling inexpensive products with massive promotions, he joined in 2015. He quickly rose to the ranks of the world’s richest people, with his net worth rising to $71.5 billion by early 2021.
Like many so-called Covid billionaires, his wealth collapsed just as quickly as it was built, falling by 87% over the span of roughly a year. Huang’s decline was particularly precipitous because of China’s sudden crackdown on the country’s private sector alongside a slowing global pandemic.
Then something surprising happened: Huang’s PDD Holdings Inc. bounced back. Not as big as before, but steady, with its expansion outside China Temu The brand name is helping it combat the continually weakening domestic economy.
As a result, Huang, now 44, has become China’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. With a net worth of $48.6 billion, he has replaced the country’s bottled water king Zhong Shanshan, who has held the top spot since April 2021.
Huang’s remarkable rise has been driven by China’s changing shopping habits, as the country’s real estate crisis has turned into a prolonged recession. He’s also the first tech tycoon to top the wealth rankings in more than three years, when government clampdown on private businesses ensnared rivals such as Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Meanwhile, Huang has also faced backlash from suppliers for driving down prices and setting rigid work schedules for his own employees.
“Ma and Jeff Bezos have been corporate leaders in their time, but times have changed and Huang is seeing greater success with a different, less visible approach,” said Brock Silvers, managing director at private equity firm Kaiyuan Capital.
Representatives for the PDD did not respond to requests for comment.
miracle of mathematics
Unlike Ma, the English teacher turned Alibaba founder, Huang represents a new generation of Chinese tech entrepreneurs who began their careers with global opportunities in mind.
At age 12, his prodigious math talent earned him a place at the elite Hangzhou Foreign Language School, where he was classmates with the children of China’s political and social elite. After graduating with a computer science degree from Zhejiang University, he left China in 2002 to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin.
Two years after graduating, he went back to help set up Google China. He founded his first company in 2007, then sold it in 2010 to start a new company that helped companies sell themselves on websites such as Alibaba’s Taobao or JD.com. When an ear infection forced him to retire in 2013, he came up with the idea for Pinduoduo.
The goal of PDD is not to make people in Shanghai feel like they are living like they are in Paris, but to make sure people in Anhui can get kitchen paper and fresh fruit,” Huang said in an interview with Caijing magazine in 2018. “The goal is not to be cheap, but to make users feel like they got a good deal.”
Temu Time
Huang has largely stayed out of the spotlight since stepping down as PDD’s chief executive officer in 2020 and chairman of the board in 2021, as Beijing began cracking down on China’s tech giants. (According to the shareholder letter, he said he had a personal interest in researching food and life sciences.)
It was around this time that PDD – and his net worth – began to decline.
But Temu, PDD’s offering outside of China, bolstered the company’s top line and powered its rebound. It topped the U.S. app store when it launched in September 2022, targeting Americans tired of inflation with cheap, unbranded products shipped straight from China. PDD reported revenue of about 248 billion yuan ($35 billion) last year, a 90% increase from 2022.
“In this economic climate, obviously people are looking for great value for their money, people are looking for low prices,” said Neil Saunders, retail analyst at GlobalData Retail. “So it’s time for value retailers like Temu to shine.”
On top of all this, PDD’s valuation has been boosted by China’s decision to abandon its Covid-Zero policy in December 2022. In November, the company overtook Alibaba for the first time to become China’s second-largest internet firm and the two rivals have been neck-and-neck since then.
Hours of punishment
Still, this rapid growth has attracted scrutiny at home and abroad. Even after an investigation into working conditions following the death of an employee in 2021, PDD requires employees to work six days a week from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., plus overtime. It’s a manifestation of the industry’s “996” culture, which companies such as ByteDance Ltd. and Alibaba have done away with after regulatory scrutiny from Beijing.
Temu’s extremely cheap offerings have also sparked frustration among some merchants and third-party sellers who feel the e-commerce giant is constantly pressing them for revenue. Matters culminated in several public rallies this summer, when in one case hundreds of small suppliers chanted slogans outside Temu’s office in Guangzhou to protest unfair fines being levied by the company.
On the other hand, American small businesses have also fueled Temu’s rapid growth. The company currently takes advantage of a trade loophole that allows duty-free shipments of up to $800 to the US by sending small packages from its warehouse in China to individual Americans. Lobbyists are pushing to lower this limit to $10.
Still, PDD has run aggressive promotional campaigns, including spending millions on a 30-second Super Bowl ad for Temu. It also has flashy banners on its Temu website that say, among others: “Shop like a billionaire.”
“Temu’s whole focus at the moment is development,” Saunders said. “Attract people to the site, get them to buy. Then if they get more accustomed, maybe they start to be more tolerant if we raise the prices a little bit. So I think this is the land grab era for Temu.”
Former Google engineer finally makes his debut PinduoduoAn e-commerce platform known for selling inexpensive products with massive promotions, he joined in 2015. He quickly rose to the ranks of the world’s richest people, with his net worth rising to $71.5 billion by early 2021.
Like many so-called Covid billionaires, his wealth collapsed just as quickly as it was built, falling by 87% over the span of roughly a year. Huang’s decline was particularly precipitous because of China’s sudden crackdown on the country’s private sector alongside a slowing global pandemic.
Then something surprising happened: Huang’s PDD Holdings Inc. bounced back. Not as big as before, but steady, with its expansion outside China Temu The brand name is helping it combat the continually weakening domestic economy.
As a result, Huang, now 44, has become China’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. With a net worth of $48.6 billion, he has replaced the country’s bottled water king Zhong Shanshan, who has held the top spot since April 2021.
Huang’s remarkable rise has been driven by China’s changing shopping habits, as the country’s real estate crisis has turned into a prolonged recession. He’s also the first tech tycoon to top the wealth rankings in more than three years, when government clampdown on private businesses ensnared rivals such as Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Meanwhile, Huang has also faced backlash from suppliers for driving down prices and setting rigid work schedules for his own employees.
“Ma and Jeff Bezos have been corporate leaders in their time, but times have changed and Huang is seeing greater success with a different, less visible approach,” said Brock Silvers, managing director at private equity firm Kaiyuan Capital.
Representatives for the PDD did not respond to requests for comment.
miracle of mathematics
Unlike Ma, the English teacher turned Alibaba founder, Huang represents a new generation of Chinese tech entrepreneurs who began their careers with global opportunities in mind.
At age 12, his prodigious math talent earned him a place at the elite Hangzhou Foreign Language School, where he was classmates with the children of China’s political and social elite. After graduating with a computer science degree from Zhejiang University, he left China in 2002 to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin.
Two years after graduating, he went back to help set up Google China. He founded his first company in 2007, then sold it in 2010 to start a new company that helped companies sell themselves on websites such as Alibaba’s Taobao or JD.com. When an ear infection forced him to retire in 2013, he came up with the idea for Pinduoduo.
The goal of PDD is not to make people in Shanghai feel like they are living like they are in Paris, but to make sure people in Anhui can get kitchen paper and fresh fruit,” Huang said in an interview with Caijing magazine in 2018. “The goal is not to be cheap, but to make users feel like they got a good deal.”
Temu Time
Huang has largely stayed out of the spotlight since stepping down as PDD’s chief executive officer in 2020 and chairman of the board in 2021, as Beijing began cracking down on China’s tech giants. (According to the shareholder letter, he said he had a personal interest in researching food and life sciences.)
It was around this time that PDD – and his net worth – began to decline.
But Temu, PDD’s offering outside of China, bolstered the company’s top line and powered its rebound. It topped the U.S. app store when it launched in September 2022, targeting Americans tired of inflation with cheap, unbranded products shipped straight from China. PDD reported revenue of about 248 billion yuan ($35 billion) last year, a 90% increase from 2022.
“In this economic climate, obviously people are looking for great value for their money, people are looking for low prices,” said Neil Saunders, retail analyst at GlobalData Retail. “So it’s time for value retailers like Temu to shine.”
On top of all this, PDD’s valuation has been boosted by China’s decision to abandon its Covid-Zero policy in December 2022. In November, the company overtook Alibaba for the first time to become China’s second-largest internet firm and the two rivals have been neck-and-neck since then.
Hours of punishment
Still, this rapid growth has attracted scrutiny at home and abroad. Even after an investigation into working conditions following the death of an employee in 2021, PDD requires employees to work six days a week from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., plus overtime. It’s a manifestation of the industry’s “996” culture, which companies such as ByteDance Ltd. and Alibaba have done away with after regulatory scrutiny from Beijing.
Temu’s extremely cheap offerings have also sparked frustration among some merchants and third-party sellers who feel the e-commerce giant is constantly pressing them for revenue. Matters culminated in several public rallies this summer, when in one case hundreds of small suppliers chanted slogans outside Temu’s office in Guangzhou to protest unfair fines being levied by the company.
On the other hand, American small businesses have also fueled Temu’s rapid growth. The company currently takes advantage of a trade loophole that allows duty-free shipments of up to $800 to the US by sending small packages from its warehouse in China to individual Americans. Lobbyists are pushing to lower this limit to $10.
Still, PDD has run aggressive promotional campaigns, including spending millions on a 30-second Super Bowl ad for Temu. It also has flashy banners on its Temu website that say, among others: “Shop like a billionaire.”
“Temu’s whole focus at the moment is development,” Saunders said. “Attract people to the site, get them to buy. Then if they get more accustomed, maybe they start to be more tolerant if we raise the prices a little bit. So I think this is the land grab era for Temu.”
