Richard Liu Qiangdong – Renowned Chinese Serial Entrepreneur

Richard Liu or Liu Qiangdong is a Chinese serial entrepreneur who founded the online retailer Joyo.com, which had estimated revenue of about $1 billion in 2013. He currently resides in Beijing, China, with his wife and daughter. Qiangdong Liu has been recognized as one of China’s most successful entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine and is considered among the top 100 influential entrepreneurs in China by Entrepreneur Magazine.

Richard’s foray into e-commerce was born out of frustration with slow internet speeds that made surfing difficult back in 1998 when he started Joyo with two partners from the computer science department at Tsinghua University. The company’s original goal was to reduce access barriers for domestic and overseas consumers by building an e-commerce platform.

Since then, Liu has helped his company expand into related areas such as physical stores, online gaming, and movie production. In March 2013, Joyo was acquired by Alibaba Group for USD 800 million, and its name was changed to 18. cm. It has since been reported that Joyo had a revenue of about USD 1 billion in 2013, with half the income coming from online sales and the other half from its network of physical retail stores.

Qiangdong has also been one of the driving forces behind China’s rapid e-commerce growth. He founded Joyo Group in 1999, a company that develops and markets web portals and provides e-commerce services. At present, Joyo Group is the second biggest Internet portal service provider in China. Its subsidiary Joyo.com ranked number 2 on China’s “Top 100 Internet Value Stars” by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for 2013. It is estimated that Joyo Group had about USD 1 billion revenue in 2013 with half of it coming from online sales and the other half from its network of physical retail stores.

In 2010, Richard Liu founded Joyo App Inc. which operates and develops mobile applications, including Joyo Movie, a video sharing service.

Liu is currently the founder and CEO of 18.cn, the former Joyo Inc., which was sold to Alibaba Group in March 2013 for $800 million USD. Liu is also a founding partner of the China Internet Corporation (CIC), which provides investments for start-up companies with innovative technology-based businesses. He serves as CIC Chairperson and Chairman of the board at CIC Media Group Co., Ltd. Refer to this page for more information.

 

Visit his page on http://richardliuofficial.com/

 

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