In today’s fast-paced life, many people have a dream of getting rich overnight, which is normal. Young people start a business and get rich early, but it is not uncommon for the rich to start getting rich in their forties and fifties, especially in the 80s and 90s. Among them is the Chinese billionaire Tong Khanh Hau. He is the Founder and CEO of Hangzhou Wahaha Group – one of China’s largest food and beverage manufacturers with a value of hundreds of billions of dollars.
The most impressive thing about this king of drinks is his persistent will and simple lifestyle. From a person who only finished secondary school, used to living in poverty and started a business when he was over 40, no one could believe that Tong Khanh Hau succeeded and became one of the richest men in China.
Born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, China in 1945, Tong Khanh Hau is the eldest son in a family of 5 brothers, the family is poor, his childhood was filled with hardships. . After moving to Hangzhou, his father could not find a job, so the whole family could only rely on his mother’s salary as a teacher.
Also because of the pursuit of poverty, after graduating from secondary school, Tong Khanh Hau had to drop out of school and work hard to earn a living on mountainous tea farms. Finally, under his mother’s arrangement, he returned to Hangzhou and became an employee in a factory run by the local school. At the age of 33, he moved to work as a salesman for a consumer goods company and waited for an opportunity to make a breakthrough because he did not want to live forever as a hired worker.
In 1987, the opportunity came. At the age of “forty”, many people often content themselves with a stable life, but Tong Khanh Hau chose to start a new challenging journey. During this period, he made his first business venture when he borrowed 140,000 yuan from relatives and friends to buy and take over a small grocery store that sold drinks and dairy products to students. He believes this will be a big deal.
As calculated, thanks to timely grasping the need to promote and develop the market economy at that time, the trade took place quite smoothly, Tong Khanh Hau quickly earned a profit in the first year of up to 15,991 USD. At the moment, per capita income is only 1/50 of that figure.
In 1989, he founded Hangzhou Wahaha Nutrition Food Factory and held the position of Director, planning to exploit the “liquid nutrition for children” market. The company first hit the Hangzhou market with the slogan “Drink Wahaha, enjoy the delicious taste”, then used TV advertising to promote in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and other markets!
Along with wise business strategies, Wahaha earned 4.88 million yuan in sales in the first year after the product was launched on the market. This number increased to 27.12 million yuan in the second year and exceeded 100 million yuan in the third year.
In 1996, Wahaha entered the bottled beverage market, Wahaha Purified Water product was born and the company has really turned it into a golden egg for a long time. Over the next three years, Wahaha continuously expanded by 40 companies in 22 different provincial cities, making it one of the largest beverage companies in China.
During the two-and-a-half decades since its founding, his business has thrived, during a period of China’s phenomenal growth with GDP expanding at over 10% a year. By 2011, Wahaha had $11 billion in revenue, accounting for the third largest market share of beverages in China, behind Coca-Cola and Hong Kong’s Tingyi brand.
Currently, this group has 80 production facilities with 180 subsidiaries in many localities in China and has been the leader in the beverage industry in the country for 20 consecutive years. The group’s 2019 revenue is more than 46 billion USD. The start-up story of Tong Khanh Hau as well as the success of Wahaha later became an inspiration for young people who want to start a business later.
With his achievements, in 2012, Tong Khanh Hau became a beverage tycoon and also the richest person in mainland China at the age of 67. At that time, his fortune was listed by Bloomberg. Valuation at 20.1 billion USD, the 30th richest in the world.
As a true “giant” with a huge fortune, Tong Khanh Hau does not look like a billion-dollar CEO. No luxury brand clothes, no bodyguards, he always kept the habit of living frugally and simply in his own way.
Few people would imagine that one of China’s richest billionaires regularly wears casual clothes, eats tofu and pickled vegetables for lunch with staff in the canteen, and spends only about $20 a day. . Perhaps, the most valuable thing on this billionaire is the $48,000 Vacheron Constantin watch he bought to replace his old Rolex.
Except in special cases, he always prefers to wear a dark coat and plain leather shoes, made in China and only buy new shoes when the pair they are wearing is old.
Every time he goes on a business trip, billionaire Tong Khanh Hau also spends very little money, sleeping will take place at the company’s headquarters located in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province instead of a luxury hotel. Even his wife and daughter work in the company and sometimes he even sleeps in the office building.
This billionaire also admits that money is all earned by himself, but he is not a person who knows how to spend money and enjoy. Talking about his simple lifestyle, he said: “Save money and work hard is my life motto” and always claim to be an ordinary citizen.
Born and raised in poverty, living half his life in misery, he never forgot his starting point and always returned to his original nature: “I’ve lived in poverty since I was a child, I didn’t even go to middle school. So even though I run a big business, I still feel like I have a lot to learn.”
(Synthetic)
at Blogtuan.info – Source: Soha.vn – Read the original article here
