Tech Entrepreneurs Dominate Hurun China Rich List 2019

Chinese tech entrepreneurs are holding most of the country’s wealth, as a large number of the names on Hurun China Rich List 2019 are CEOs of tech giants.

“There is an obvious increase in the number of members in the IT industry, who are mainly from unicorns and companies on the technology innovation board, ” said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman of the research unit Hurun Report.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma kept the crown from last year as the richest man in China, with a 2% increase to 275 billion yuan ($39 billion). Pony Ma from another tech giant Tencent ranked the second with assets totaling 260 billion yuan ($37 billion).

Four fresh faces squeezed into the top ten, two of them belonging to the tech industry. One is Colin Huang, CEO of Pinduoduo, with 135 billion yuan ($19 billion) and the other is Ding Lei from online services provider NetEase with 125 billion ($18 billion).

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“Every year… we can see many innovative business models and newly listed entrepreneurs. What they have in common is that they can predict the future pretty accurately and provide continuous care for their users,” said Hoogewerf.

The 39-year-old Huang is the first millennial to break into the ranks of the super rich. His assets grew by almost 40 billion yuan ($6 billion) in the past year to secure his seventh position on the list.

Founded in 2015, Huang’s company Pinduoduo, a social e-commerce platform targeting price-sensitive customers, is valued at over 290 billion yuan ($41 billion). In the past fiscal year which ends June of this year, Pinduoduo had 480 million yearly active users, growing by 41%, according to the report.