Meet self-made tech billionaire Wang Xing, founder of Meituan: after failed social media networks based on Facebook and Twitter, he made big bucks with a Groupon-inspired shopping platform

May 24 , 2021

Wang Xing, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of China’s Meituan-Dianping at the debut of the company on the Hong Kong Exchanges in September 2018. Photo: Reuters

He graduated from Tsinghua University and went on to build Chinese versions of Friendster, Facebook (later bought and rebranded as Renren) and Twitter

In 2015, he merged Meituan with another Chinese group buying site, Dianping, naming the new company Meituan-Dianping – now he’s worth US$20 billion

Wang Xing, founder and CEO of Meituan, is one of the China’s richest self-made entrepreneurs, ranking No 16 on Forbes’ China’s Rich List 2020. He is known for building the lifestyle empire Meituan-Dianping, with businesses encompassing food delivery, internet group purchases, taxi-hailing, bike sharing, travel and a variety of leisure services. There’s a saying among Chinese millennials that Meituan is even more convenient than mum’s kitchen, a joke born from how often China’s young people order their food from Meituan.

Recently, the 42-year-old found himself embroiled in political controversy after posting a millennium-old poem written about China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang decreeing the burning of books – which is usually interpreted as anti-establishment. He lost more than US$2.5 billion in a matter of days and his company is now also under the scrutiny of regulators for possible breaches of China’s antitrust laws.

Despite this, the 42-year old is still worth US$20.3 billion at the time of writing. So how did the internet entrepreneur establish the largest lifestyle app and acquire his multibillion dollar worth?

Online food delivery service platform Meituan-Dianping’s senior management, from left: chief financial officer and senior vice-president, Chen Shaohui; co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer, Wang Xing; and co-founder and senior vice-president, Wang Huiwen, before the company’s global offering investor lunch presentation at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Wan Chai, Hong Kong in September 2018. Photo: SCMP

Wang was born in 1979 in Longyan, Fujian province to a father who was the owner of a cement factory. He graduated from Tsinghua University with a degree in electronic engineering in 2001 before enrolling in the University of Delaware to attain a PhD degree in computer engineering. However, he did not complete his studies and dropped out in 2004.

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Together with a friend from university and another from high school, he created a social networking site called Duoduoyou, comparable to 2000s platform Friendster. However, lacking clear business models and experience, their venture quickly failed. Wang later created a second social networking site, Youzitu, but once again, it failed.

Wang Xing, co-founder and chief executive officer of Meituan-Dianping, at a news conference in Hong Kong in September 2018. Photo: Bloomberg

According to 163.com, Wang was undaunted by his failure and began a careful study of American social networks. He decided to target a segment of the market and in 2005 he set up a Chinese version of Facebook, a network mainly for college students called Xiaonei. It hit financial difficulties though and Wang had to sell the company to another Chinese businessman, Chen Yizhou, who rebranded it as Renren and made it one of the early home-grown stars of Chinese social media.