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Temu\u2019s moment as a stiff competitor to Amazon<\/a> and Shein came and passed\u2014and so did the founder\u2019s reign as the richest man in China.\u00a0<\/p>\n PDD Holdings<\/a>, the parent company of the fast-growing Temu shopping platform, had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad Monday, losing a whopping $50 billion in market value<\/a> after the e-commerce giant posted disappointing quarterly revenue. This consequently knocked Colin Huang, founder of Pinduoduo<\/a> (whose parent company is also PDD Holdings) off his pedestal as the wealthiest person in China just weeks after earning that title.<\/p>\n Huang, 44, became China\u2019s richest person on Aug. 8, boasting impressive results from Pinduoduo, a popular gamified online marketplace that connects buyers and sellers in China. It\u2019s also the company behind discount shopping website Temu, which has grown in popularity in the U.S. during the past couple of years\u2014although it\u2019s facing intense scrutiny by governments<\/a> for using import trade loopholes and for the quality and origins of its products. While technically headquartered in Ireland, the majority of Temu\u2019s employees work in China.<\/p>\n After PDD Holdings tanked earlier this week, Huang\u2019s net worth plummeted a staggering $14.1 billion to $33.5 billion, Bloomberg<\/em>\u2019s Billionaires Index shows<\/a>. <\/em>That makes him the fourth-wealthiest person in China and the 48th wealthiest person in the world, the index showed at the time of Fortune<\/em>\u2019s publication. Before its earnings call, which turned out to be a major letdown, Pinduoduo had a market cap of more than $190 billion, higher than Uber<\/a> ($150.5 billion) or Sony<\/a> ($119 billion). As of Wednesday, the company\u2019s market cap had fallen to $124.4 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are seeing many new challenges ahead from changing consumer demand, intensifying competition, and uncertainties in [the] global environment,\u201d Lei Chen, co-CEO of PDD Holdings, said during the earnings call<\/a>. \u201cAs a result, we will enter a new phase of high quality development that calls for increased investments. Our profitability will [be affected] as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n In his early days, Huang earned his master\u2019s in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and interned at Microsoft<\/a> in both Beijing and Seattle before beginning his career at Google<\/a> in the U.S. in 2004. This was when Google really started taking off.<\/p>\n \u201cThe operating profits and the number of [employees] grew rapidly,\u201d Huang wrote in a now-deleted blog post, according to Business Insider<\/em>. \u201cThe operating profits and the number of [employees] grew rapidly\u201d while his bank account balance \u201csuddenly grew a lot too.\u201d<\/p>\n This is when Huang really started to get a taste for being rich.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very good experience for me to go from a very poor background to all of a sudden [being among those who had] become extremely rich,\u201d Huang told Forbes <\/em>in a 2018 interview<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting, but sometimes it also has some not so good side effects.\u201d<\/p>\n But at his core, Huang is a serial entrepreneur, having founded e-commerce platform Ouku.com<\/a> in 2007. Pinduoduo claims Huang also founded online games company Xinyoudi in 2011, although no company with that name has ever existed, according to The Financial Times<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>The publication in 2020 referred to Huang as \u201cShanghai\u2019s secretive internet king\u201d who set up a <\/em>\u201cwide network of other ecommerce and gaming groups.\u201d<\/p>\n Huang, most importantly, founded PDD Holdings. He stepped down as chairman in March 2021, but still is a major shareholder. In September 2022, the company launched Temu to compete with Shein, led by fellow Chinese billionaire Sky Xu. In 2012, Xu founded Shein, which morphed into a fast-fashion sensation, particularly for younger generations.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Huang fell from the pinnacle of wealth in his native country, he\u2019s frankly quite used to being rich. In fact, Huang, a factory worker\u2019s son, became China\u2019s youngest self-made billionaire back in 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cI got to learn how to manage [relationships] and accepted the status of being rich, before [I] got rich,\u201d Huang told Forbes.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nWho is Colin Huang and how did he become the richest man in China?<\/h2>\n
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