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Sign upSeven lessons from Tencent's Pony Ma
How the man behind the Chinese goliath keeps innovating
17 September 2018
Ma Huateng – better known as “Pony Ma” – is the elusive founder, chairman and chief executive of China’s titan tech firm Tencent. The 46-year-old magnate shies away from the spotlight, preferring to lead rather decisively from the shadows.
Ma now sits atop the world’s fifth most valuable public firm, worth US$556 billion (£402 billion). Tencent is the collective answer to Facebook, Apple Pay, gaming, WhatsApp, Spotify and Amazon. Ma and his co-founders built a digital platform business from scratch over two decades and they have one of the largest data treasure chests on the planet to show for it.
In 2017 Tencent became the first Chinese firm to pass the US$500 billion stock market valuation mark, overtaking Facebook. Yet few, in the West at least, have heard of it. Away from China’s fi rewalled internet garden, you can live quite happily on a diet of other digital services. Not in China. Analysts estimate that more than two thirds of the almost 1.4 billion population use Tencent.
Its business roughly splits into three. First, the ubiquitous messaging app WeChat. Launched in 2011, when traditional desktops ruled and Tencent dominated online instant messaging with QQ (similar to Israeli tech company Mirabilis’s ICQ), cynics said it would cannibalise its own off ering; that QQ and WeChat weren’t diff erent enough, but Ma’s strategy paid off . From mobile payments to taxi hailing, users can live their lives on one app.
Second, if you’re into gaming, chances are you’re playing on a platform owned by Tencent. It is the biggest mobile gaming franchise in the world, surpassing the revenues of Microsoft and Sony. Over the years, Tencent has quietly bought stakes in major players such as Activision Blizzard, which puts out Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.
Tencent’s third source of revenue is an ecosystem built around its one billion users. The firm supports a mind-bending number of apps directed at improving people’s everyday digital lives, including its own version of Uber, Didi Dache.
