Ex-Googler becomes China’s second-richest person

-

Ex-Googler becomes China’s second-richest person


BY :  DAILY NEWS   (MANNAN ALEEM)
Colin Huang
Image captionPinduoduo's Colin Huang is still valued at about $5bn less than Tencent's founder
  • A former Google employee was briefly ranked the second richest person in China, following a surge in sales at his e-commerce business, Pinduoduo.
  • Colin Huang was valued at $45.4bn (£36.4bn) by Forbes, on Sunday, ahead of Alibaba's Jack Ma but behind Tencent's Pony Ma.
  • Mr Huang was previously an intern at Microsoft and then spent three years as an engineer at Google.
  • “These three years were incredibly valuable to me,” he blogged in 2016.
  • “Google gave me far more than I contributed.”
  • According to Forbes, a slip in Pinduoduo's value has since given Mr Ma back the second spot.
  • Shopping games
  • Mr Huang founded Pinduoduo in 2015.
  • And the company became particularly popular in China during the Covid-19 pandemic, with orders increasing from 50 million to nearly 65 million per day.
  • Its novel features include team buying, where customers come together to purchase more units at a lower price.
  • Customers can also play games on the site and are sometimes rewarded with free gifts.
  • Pinduoduo
  • Image copyrightPINDUODUO
  • In his 2016 blog, Mr Huang said some early Google employees had been adversely affected by quickly becoming wealthy.
  • “They suddenly got too much money, lost incentives to work and started to look for fun and new careers,” he wrote.
  • “Many years passed and they wasted their most precious time, when they were most likely to have other outstanding achievements.”
  • Mr Huang still has some way to go to catch up with the world's richest technology billionaire, Jeff Bezos.
  • Forbes currently estimates the Amazon founder is worth $162.2bn.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Seattle to end police-free protest zone after shootings

-
Image
Seattle to end police-free protest zone after shootings Image copyright EPA Image caption The zone was taken over by protesters on 8 June Seattle's mayor has said the city plans to take back a district that is being occupied by armed protesters, after three people were shot at the weekend. Mayor Jenny Durkan said the violence had become "increasingly difficult" for businesses and residents. She said the city would work with the demonstrators to end the so-called Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone. The city centre zone was taken over by protesters on 8 June after police withdrew following violent clashes. What did the mayor say? Mayor Durkan, who has been under growing pressure to crack down on the protest zone, told a news conference on Monday the city police department would return to its precinct "peacefully and in the near future". "The cumulative impacts of the gatherings and protests and the night-time atmosphere and violence," s...
Read more

Coronavirus: Majority testing positive have no symptoms

-
Image
Coronavirus: Majority testing positive have no symptoms  Related Topi Coronavirus pandemic Image copyright GETTY IMAGES Only 22% of people testing positive for coronavirus reported having symptoms on the day of their test, according to the Office for National Statistics. This hammers home the importance of "asymptomatic transmission" - spread of the virus by people who aren't aware they're carrying it. Health and social care staff appeared to be more likely to test positive. This comes as deaths from all causes in the UK fell to below the average for the second week in a row. Between the end of March and June, there were 59,000 more deaths than the five-year average. While the ONS survey includes relatively small numbers of positive swab tests (120 infections in all) making it hard to make any strong conclusions about who is most likely to be infected, there are some patterns coming through in the data: Those in people-facing health or soci...
Read more
-
Image
Saudi Arabia has banned international visitors from making the Islamic pilgrimage, or Hajj, this year in a bid to control coronavirus. Only a very limited number of people currently living in the kingdom may take part, an announcement on state media says. An estimated two million people would otherwise have visited Mecca and Medina this summer for the annual gathering. There had been fears the Hajj might be cancelled altogether. In normal times the pilgrimage is one of the most significant moments in the Muslim religious calendar. But only citizens from countries around the world who are already resident in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to attend this year. Image copyright AFP Image caption Socially distanced worshippers praying in Mecca in April The authorities say this is the only way they will be able to make plans for social distancing that will keep people safe. Saudi Arabia has recorded 161,005 cases of infection and 1,307 deaths.  It only lifted a nationwide lock...
Read more