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	Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, is a Chinese billionaire entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tencent Holdings, a Chinese technology conglomerate and holding company that is best known for its instant messaging app WeChat and also for mobile gaming.</div>
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	As of January 2021, Ma is worth $46.8 billion which places him at the thirty-first spot on the Forbes Real Times Billionaires List. According to Bloomberg, most of Ma&#39;s wealth comes from a 7.4% stake in Tencent&mdash;one of the most valuable companies in Asia with a market value of over $561 billion.</div>

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	<strong>Ma Huateng&#39;s life</strong></div>
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	Ma partly grew up in Shenzhen, a global centre in technology and research and dubbed as &ldquo;China&rsquo;s Silicon Valley&rdquo; by many. He graduated from Shenzhen University in 1993 with a degree in computer science. His first job was writing code for pagers at a telecommunications firm in Shenzhen where he used to earn $176 a month. Ma co-founded Tencent in November 1998 together with college classmate Zhang Zhidong. The firm&rsquo;s first product was instant messaging software similar to AOL&#39;s ICQ. Initially, the product was named OICQ but was later changed to QQ. Interestingly, Ma first met his wife Wang Danting on QQ.</div>
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	By 2004, Tencent controlled more than two-thirds of the Chinese instant messaging market prompting Ma to take the company public. The company raised $200 million in an IPO and was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange quickly making Ma one of the richest people in China&rsquo;s telecom industry.</div>
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	In 2010, Ma set up two competing teams of engineers asking them to create a new product. One team presented an app for text messaging and group chat&mdash;WeChat&mdash;which launched the following year. As of 2022, the app has over 1.2 billion monthly active users. The application has evolved into a so-called &ldquo;super-app&rdquo; because of its wide-ranging services that also include payments, video conferencing and video games.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div>
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	Tencent also has minority stakes in Tesla, music streaming service Spotify, and social media platform Snapchat&#39;s parent company.</div>
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	Ma uses the nickname Pony, which is derived from the English translation of his family name Ma, which is the Chinese word for &quot;horse&quot;. Ma keeps a low profile in contrast to his former business rival at Alibaba, Jack Ma.&nbsp;</div>

Ma Huateng - He is a Chinese Billionaire who is also known as Pony Ma. Know more about Ma Huateng or Pony Ma with latest news updates, his early life, career, education with business-standard.com

Ma Huateng

Who is Ma Huateng?