Surprise ascent of China’s richest person, Temu billionaire Colin Huang

China’s richest person had a surprising ascent to the top and once lost a staggering 87 per cent of his net worth nearly overnight.

E-commerce tycoon Colin Huang has become China’s richest man, an index showed Friday.

It caps an astronomical ascent for the former Google employee whose shopping site Temu has sucked in consumers with its low prices and all-powerful algorithms.

Mr Huang, the founder of PDD Holdings -- which owns Temu and Chinese retail app Pinduoduo — is now worth $74 billion ($US48.6 billion), the Bloomberg Billionaires Index said.

He overtakes Zhong Shanshan, the boss of beverage company Nongfu Spring who had topped the list since April 2021, as the world’s 25th wealthiest person and the richest in China.

Close behind them is Ma Huateng, known as Pony Ma — head of tech giant Tencent, whose WeChat is often described as China’s “everything app”.

Colin Huang. Picture: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

And in fourth place is Zhang Yiming, founder of Bytedance, which owns the massively popular TikTok video sharing platform.

Mr Huang, born in 1980 in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, was a teenage maths whiz and a former employee of Google China.

In 2015 he founded online shopping site Pinduoduo, which blossomed into one of China’s most successful e-commerce empires — rivalling Jack Ma’s Alibaba.

His net worth jumped to $108 billion ($US71 billion) in early 2021 but like many Covid-era billionaires, his fortune collapsed 87 per cent that year.

Then something surprising took place — he quickly made a comeback as his company expanded outside China under the name Temu.

The app lured in consumers with huge discounts and a vast array of products, offering sometimes staggeringly low prices in a fiercely competitive field.

Colin Huang delivering a speech during the launch of the company's initial public offering in Shanghai. Picture: AFP

Its overseas iteration Temu launched in 2022 in the United States, where it amassed a loyal consumer base with ultra-low-cost goods made and shipped from China.

Its success dovetailed with persistent high inflation that has pushed cost-conscious consumers to hunt for bargains, and it has since taken off in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.

Despite only arriving in Europe last year, Temu has said it has on average around 75 million monthly active users in the region.

But its massive success had drawn accusations of unfair commercial practices and lax safety standards.

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

And in April, South Korean regulators opened an investigation into Temu on suspicion of false advertising and unfair practices.

Last month, hundreds of merchants in China demonstrated at an affiliated office in the southern city of Guangzhou, alleging unfair treatment in the sale of their products on the platform.

But that has done little to dent the success of the firm, with PDD Holdings announcing in May that first-quarter net profit had more than tripled year-on-year.

The firm’s US-listed shares closed at $210 ($US138.02) apiece on Thursday, giving it a market capitalisation of $291 billion ($191.68 billion).