App owner Temu becomes China’s richest man

Beijing. E-commerce tycoon Colin Huang, owner of popular shopping site Temu, has become China’s richest man, according to an index published Friday by the Bloomberg business news agency.

The founder of PDD Holdings, which owns Temu and Chinese commerce app Pinduoduo, is worth $48.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Behind him were Zhong Shanshan, owner of the beverage company Nongfu Spring which topped the list in 2021; Ma Huateng, the boss of the tech giant Tencent and its popular app WeChat; and Zhang Yiming, the founder of Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok.

Born in 1980 in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, Huang was a maths genius in his teens and later worked at Google China.

In 2015, he founded the e-commerce portal Pinduoduo, which became one of the most famous in China, competing with Alibaba.

The app lured consumers with huge discounts and a wide range of products, sometimes offering surprisingly low prices in a fiercely competitive market.

Temu embroiled in allegations of unfair business practices and poor safety standards

Its international version, Temu, was launched in 2022 in the United States, where it gained a loyal customer base with ultra-cheap products produced and shipped from China. It was later also implemented in Europe and Latin America.

Its success has coincided with high inflation that has prompted cost-conscious consumers to seek out discounts.

Although it only arrived in Europe a year ago, Temu claims to already have around 75 million monthly active users in the region.

But its success has been accompanied by accusations of unfair trade practices and poor product safety standards.

This year, consumer groups in Europe accused Temu of manipulating shoppers into spending more money by distorting their ability to make “free and informed decisions.”

In April, South Korean regulators launched an investigation into the company over suspicions of misleading advertising and unfair practices.

Even in China, hundreds of merchants protested in front of its offices in Guangzhou, alleging unfair treatment in the sale of their products to the platform.

But that did not affect the performance of PDD Holdings, with a market capitalization of $191.68 billion, which in May announced that it had tripled its profit in the first quarter compared to the previous year.