Ma Huateng's Internet services empire, Tencent, based in Shenzhen, China, leveraged its massive reach -- it has 450 million active instant-messenger users -- into $1 billion in revenue last year. Inspired by early instant-messaging programs, Huateng and a childhood friend launched their own service, QQ, in 1999. Once he had a captive audience, he added paid services like gaming and online dating.

A native of China’s southern Guangdong province, Huateng graduated in Computer Science from the Shenzhen University and joined China Motion Telecom Development as a software developer for pagers. In 1998, he co-founded Tencent with four others and the company's initial focus was instant messaging service. The messaging service became very popular across China and the company got its first funding from two venture capital firms headquartered in Shenzhen, Tencent listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in June 2004 raising around $200 million.

Huateng used the money to invest in talent and technological innovation, actively participating in the development of the internet industry and entered into segments like online gaming, social networking, e-commerce, online music, online video, live streaming, news and literature. Known for its social lifestyle offerings, Tencent expanded greatly under the leadership of Huateng and launched products that became an instant hit like WeChat.

WeChat, which was launched in 2011, had over one billion monthly active users by 2018; apart from messaging it also offers payment services. Huateng used his technological prowess to make Tencent a big player in the gaming space and is one of the largest video-game publishers in the world.

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