The rise of e-commerce magnate Colin Huang, a former Google employee whose shopping site Temu has captivated customers with its low prices and superpowerful algorithms, has culminated in Huang becoming the richest man in China, according to an index released on Friday.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Huang, the creator of PDD Holdings, which is the owner of Temu and the Chinese shopping app Pinduoduo, is currently valued at $48.6 billion.
He becomes the richest person in China and the 25th richest person worldwide, surpassing Zhong Shanshan, the CEO of the beverage firm Nongfu Spring, who had been at the top of the list since April 2021.
Immediately behind them is Ma Huateng, also referred to as Pony Ma, the CEO of Tencent, the internet behemoth whose WeChat is frequently referred to as China’s “everything app”.
Zhang Yiming, the creator of Bytedance, the company that controls the hugely popular TikTok video sharing platform, comes in fourth.
Huang, a former employee of Google China and teenage math prodigy, was born in Hangzhou, in eastern China, in 1980.
He established the online retailer Pinduoduo in 2015, and it quickly grew to become one of China’s most prosperous e-commerce businesses, rivaling Jack Ma’s Alibaba.
With an enormous selection of products and steep discounts, the app enticed users with what were at times absurdly low pricing in a very competitive market.
Its overseas iteration Temu launched in 2022 in the United States, where it amassed a loyal consumer base with ultra-low-cost goods made and shipped from China.
Its success dovetailed with persistent high inflation that has pushed cost- conscious consumers to hunt for bargains, and it has since taken off in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.
Despite only arriving in Europe last year, Temu has said it has on average around 75 million monthly active users in the region.
But its massive success had drawn accusations of unfair commercial practices and lax safety standards.
This year, consumer groups in Europe accused Temu of manipulating shoppers into spending more money, distorting their ability to make “free and informed decisions”.
And in April, South Korean regulators opened an investigation into Temu on suspicion of false advertising and unfair practices.
Hundreds of Chinese merchants protested outside an associated office in the southern city of Guangzhou last month, claiming they were treated unfairly when their wares were sold on the platform.
However, that hasn’t really hurt the company’s success; in May, PDD Holdings said that its first-quarter net profit had more than tripled compared to the previous year.
With a closing price of $138.02 per share on Thursday, the company’s US-listed shares gave it a $191.68 billion market capitalization.
