For the longest time Jack Ma has enjoyed the top spot in the list of richest Chinese since long. The co-founder of Alibaba Group, however, has now been dethroned from his apex position.?
With a recent surge in valuation of Tencent Holding, Pony Ma is now the richest person in China.
Tencent is China¡¯s largest game developer and the company saw its shares propelling to over HKD 500 (~Rs. 4,870) for the first time in intraday trading on Wednesday. With this, Tencent has now become China¡¯s most valuable company, beating Alibaba in the race.
Proportionately, the wealth of Tencent¡¯s founder has also grown substantially. Pony Ma is now worth $50 billion (~Rs. 3.77 lakh crores). Alibaba¡¯s Jack Ma's is worth around $48 billion (~Rs. 3.62 lakh crores), as per a report by Bloomberg.
Pony Ma comes from China's southern Guangdong province and studied computer science at Shenzhen University. Ma was a software developer at a supplier of telecom services and products.?
He then went on to co-found Tencent, initially as an instant-messaging service, with four others in the late 1990s.
Since then, Pony Ma has had a long journey towards the top spot. He became the second richest person in China by overtaking real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin in 2013.?
He grabbed the top spot by overtaking Baidu's Robin Li in early 2014. Later that year, Jack Ma beat everyone to the spot as Alibaba went public in the US.
Tencent¡¯s stock has almost doubled, since the company hit a low in 2018 due to China¡¯s revised approval process for new games. Within the last month the tech giant reported a 26 percent jump in its first-quarter revenue of 2020.?
The recent surge propelled Pony Ma to the top spot. Since he owns a 7 percent stake in the company, Pony Ma pocketed around $757 million (roughly Rs. 5,720 crores) through some 14.6 million of his Tencent shares that he sold this year, reports Bloomberg
Tencent¡¯s recent jump on the stock market is being credited to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As countries observed months long lockdown to avoid the spread of the novel disease, internet usage skyrocketed across the globe.?
Online gaming is one of the activities that observed a rapid rise and Tencent being a major in the field,was bound to gain a major chunk out of the rise.