Ma Huateng, Han nationality, born in 1971, from Shantou City, Guangdong Province, one of the main founders of Tencent. Ma Huateng is currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tencent; a representative of the National People's Congress. In 2016, the Hurun Research Institute released the "2016 Hurun Charity List of the Big City Little Love and Mercy Association", and Ma Huateng became the first charity for the first time with a donation of 13.9 billion yuan. On August 7, 2017, Tencent's stock price hit a record high of HK$320.6 in intraday trading, and Ma Huateng became the richest man in China with a net worth of US$36.1 billion. In April 2018, Ma Huateng was honored as the world's most influential person in 2018 by Time Magazine. On October 25, 2018, Forbes released the 2018 Forbes China 400 Rich List. Ma Huateng ranked second in the list with a net worth of US$32.8 billion. In March 2019, Ma Huateng ranked 20th in the 2019 Forbes Global Billionaires list with a fortune of 38.8 billion US dollars. Ma Huateng ranked 4th in the 2019 Forbes China Charity List. On September 5, 2019, the Breakthrough Award Foundation and its patrons-Ma Huateng and others jointly announced the winners of the 2020 Breakthrough Award and New Horizons Award.
In 1984, Ma Huateng moved with his parents from Hainan to Shenzhen. In 1993, he graduated from the Computer Department of Shenzhen University. In the same year, he entered Shenzhen Runxun Communication Development Co., Ltd. and started the research and development of the paging system. In 1995, Ma Huateng established the Shenzhen station of Huiduo.com. In 1998, the concept of practical software not only cultivated Ma Huateng's keen sense of the software market, but also made him profitable from it. Ma Huateng is one of the authors of the popular stock card. The stock card he developed in cooperation with his friends has been selling well in the SEG electronic market. Ma Huateng also continued to solve software problems for his friend's company. This made him not only famous in the circle, but also had considerable primitive accumulation. But his first pot of gold in the true sense came from the stock market. His most exciting deal was to fry 100,000 yuan to 700,000 yuan. This laid the foundation for Ma Huateng's independent entrepreneurship.
In 1998, Ma Huateng and his classmate Zhang Zhidong "joint venture" registered Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. After that, it attracted three shareholders: Zeng Liqing, Xu Chenye, and Chen Yidan. As a software company established without the intervention of venture capital, Ma Huateng and his companions were shocked by every initial expenditure. When deciding to do OICQ, there were already two domestic companies doing it first, and the products were more famous in the market than Tencent. Ma Huateng didn’t think much about it. In addition to the fact that this product could mutually promote the company’s main business development business, mobile bureaus, paging stations, and wireless paging solutions and projects, it was also because at that time many companies such as Feihua and China.com were interested in instant messaging. Project, the market appears to be very promising.
During the initial development process, Tencent went through a very important compensation lawsuit: around 1999-2000, OICQ, modeled after ICQ, grabbed a lot of ICQ user groups, especially users in mainland China. Later, ICQ passed legal channels and finally judged Tencent. Lost the lawsuit, stopped using the name OICQ, and returned the OICQ domain name to ICQ, and compensated a certain amount of expenses. Since then, Tencent has used the name QQ. In February 1999, after Tencent developed the first "Chinese-style" ICQ, namely OICQ, it was welcomed by users, and the number of registrations increased to tens of thousands in a short period of time. The increase in the number of people requires continuous expansion of servers, and at that time the server hosting fee of one or two thousand yuan was overwhelmed by the company.
In 2000, the first Internet bubble swept the entire Chinese Internet. Tencent entered the most difficult period. When faced with financial difficulties, it almost sold its ICQ software to Shenzhen Telecom Data Bureau for 600,000 yuan. Eventually fell down due to price reasons. The software could not be sold, but the user growth was rapid. The investment required to operate QQ was increasing. Ma Huateng had to go around to raise money. Ma Huateng took the 6-version, more than 20-page business plan and began to look for foreign risks. Investment, I finally met IDG and Yingke Digital, and got the first investment. Tencent's development is gradually on track. On June 16, 2004, Ma Huateng led Tencent to list on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
WeChat is a free application that Tencent launched on January 21, 2011 to provide instant messaging services for smart terminals. It was created by the product team of Tencent Guangzhou R&D Center led by Zhang Xiaolong. WeChat supports cross-communication operators and cross-operating system platforms to quickly send free voice messages, videos, pictures and texts over the Internet. At the same time, you can also use the sharing of streaming media content and location-based social plug-ins "Shake", " Service plug-ins such as "Drifting Bottle", "Circle of Friends", "Public Platform", and "Voice Notepad". As of the second quarter of 2016, WeChat has covered more than 94% of China's smartphones, with 806 million monthly active users, covering more than 200 countries and more than 20 languages. In addition, the total number of WeChat public accounts of various brands has exceeded 8 million, and WeChat payment users have reached about 400 million.