Here are 15 things that you didn’t know about the China Tech Giant and almost the world heard about this company “Tencent”. Tencent Holding Ltd. was founded in 1998 and now this is a Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company. Tencent company was founded by Zhang Zhidong, Pony Ma, Xu Chenye, Zeng Liqing and Chen Yidan. And now this Tencent is specialise in various fields like AI (Artificial Intelligence), gaming, Internet services and technology in China as well as globally.
1- Tencent Began as a messenger service in 1998
Tencent started messenger service known as QQ chat back in 1998. It was used on a minor scale internationally gained most of its popularity in China. It had no sources of income other than advertising and offering premium services to users at this time there were over 400 different companies offering messenger services only Internet.
2- WeChat reached 100 million users in 2012
WeChat is a super app that can be used for messaging, social media and mobile payments and it’s reached 100 million active users as of 2012. This has been largely attributing to the fact that the Chinese government subsidies the development of E-commerce and social media in their 12th five-year plan set have for 2011 to 2015. Wechat is Tencent’s main platform for social media and it’s grown into the most used app in the world according to figures of 2018.
3- Tencent is registered in the Cayman Islands
Although Tencent is entirely Chinese owned and operated it but actually registered as a company in the Cayman Islands located in the Caribbean. There are around 60,000 residents on the island more than 1000 companies registered there the reason for this avoid paying taxes The Cayman Island has very loose rules and regulations and there is absolutely no corporation tax. So if you spending money on Tencent products than don’t be surprised when your country’s government starts putting up income taxes and VAT to make of all the lost earnings if the companies earned paying taxes, well consumers are.
4- Tencent became the first Asian Company with a valuation of more than $500 billion
On 21 November 2017, Tencent became the first Asian Company to be worth more than 500 billion dollars it’s stock price sold nearly 55 dollars making a net worth of estimated 522 billion dollars. This made the worth more than Facebook which is valued around 519 billion dollar on the same day. The only other companies that have been worth more than half a trillion dollars are Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
5- Tencent’s total equity was around $45 billion in 2018
As of 2018, Tencent’s total equity is around 45 billion dollars with total assets more than 75 billion dollars. It had total revenue of 34 billion and an operating income of 13 billion dollars at the end of 2017. Most of its earning are came from advertising on social media, digital purchases such as video games and microtransactions within those games and apps.
6- Tencent Turned around over no profits for the first 3 years
Between 1998 and 2001, Tencent turned over no profits and seemed scrap creep many other startups in that era. With only a small base of the active user and minimum sources of income the company is almost disbanded in 2001, it was only the result of smart management that help them to bought in the scope of operations into some more profitable sectors.
7- Tencent denies storing deleted messages from Wechat
WeChat denies claims store deleted messages on the database. In February 2018, the Chinese government revealed that we can achieve the deleted conversation from the suspects in order to find the other people who may be involved in the related criminal activity. In one case deleted messages were received from the phones of 63 different suspects in order to prosecute them for corruption this has sparked among the resident among the China who feel that intrusion is an abuse of their human rights. Despite the government confession Tencent continues to deny allegations that they store messages that deleted say that they can only be retrieved them by personal phones or devices.
8- The Chinese government have cracked down on the gaming industry
An epidemic of gaming addiction among the youth culture of China sparked to government cracked down the video game industry in 2018. The regulation was bought in which requires the user to identify themselves before playing computer games for people under 12 gaming time has been limited to a maximum of 1 hour per day furthermore all the new game realizes have been blocked this has caused Tencent to share the drop by 44% by 2017.
9- Tencent owns a 10% stake in UBISOFT.
As of October 2018, Tencent has managed to acquire enough stocks to have a 10% stake in UBI soft arrival gaming company the owner of UBI soft that this signals a hustle signal of takeover and their acquisition should be acquired and the move is difficult of Tencent aggressive market to enhance over the last decade as they move in the western competitor from there dominance over the Tech World.
10- WeChat has nearly 1 billion active monthly users
WeChat is easily the biggest app on the planet most people from the west have hardly heard about it because there was the custom to use Whatsapp and Facebook and social media as well as sites like Amazon shop for e-commerce. However, all of these things are banned in China and cannot be accessed for this reason the WeChat super app its corporate social media and E-commerce to cater to the needs of one billion people of China and other south-eastern countries such as Malaysia and Bhutan.
11- An 18,000 investment in Tencent in 2004 would be worth over $ Million in 2018
If one was made an investment of 18,000 dollars in Tencent in just 14 years ago back in 2004 it would be worth over a billion dollars at the time this article is written. At the height of Tencent’s valuation in November 2017, the initial investment could be around 2 million dollars.
12- Tencent Aim to rival Alibaba in the e-commerce sector
With video game industry being bought into a grinding hold by new Chinese regulation Tencent is ramping up the company for the competition of Alibaba e-commerce sector by using the subsidiary of JD.com purchased in 2004 they hope to capitalize on a global e-commerce market that was bringing more money from the customers outside of China.
13- WeChat censors a lot of information
WeChat uses the intelligence system to block the flow of information to users. Any information that is critical of the Chinese government such as news about the violation of human rights will be censored immediately. The censoring system isolates keywords and blogs that transmission of a message containing them furthermore users did not even receive a notification when a message gets blocked.
14- 5% of luxury brands outside of China sell to the Chinese market through WeChat
Nearly all of the luxury brand was so common in the west sell to Chinese consumer through the e-commerce platform of WeChat its very hard for foreign companies to set up their stores in China due to strict trade regulations which heavily favorable business. Therefore companies like Gucci and many more can only reach Chinese consumers through this super app.
15- Tencent represent the dawning of a new age
Tencent terrifying growth over the past decade signal and new age world of tech and beyond. There are aggressive market stands demonstrate market strategy becomes common among many Chinese companies branching out the international stage there are acquisitions represent a creeping influence that could soon the majority of ownership for many businesses we naturally to be European or North American with almost 1 of 7th people on the planet actually living in China they are growing market dominance over an economy built on the international consumer should be a little surprise.
So these are some unknown and interesting facts related to the China Giant Tencent.