Internet tycoon Yu Jiawen, 24, urges young to be audacious

At 24, Yu Jiawen is one of China's youngest internet tycoons. His mobile social networking app Super Curriculum, created two years ago, catapulted him to fame and wealth after attracting more than 10 million mainland university students.

The Guangdong native created an uproar last month after appearing on the CCTV programme Voice of Youth, where he encouraged his peers to break free from society's expectations and embrace the internet. Wearing a hoodie and lens-free glasses and carrying a big stuffed bear, Yu said the web offered opportunities to the courageous and creative. He was also thinking of handing out 100 million yuan (HK$126 million) in bonuses to his staff next year.

The reaction online to his appearance was swift and polarised. "Why is this little kid so arrogant?" one person wrote on Yu's microblog. "A 100 million yuan bonus for employees? That can only be a lie."

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Yu said he didn't expect the barrage of negativity but stood behind his comments. "I spoke on the show because I wanted to encourage Chinese people my age who do not have rich or powerful parents. I wanted to share my story, to let them know that we too can succeed without a strong family background," he said. "We just have to be creative and brave to catch the trend of the era."

Yu said on the show he was born into a poor family in Chaozhou, Guangdong, in 1990. His parents were pork sellers but the job didn't interest him, he said, so at 14, he set up his first business - an online social platform for local students. Two years later he sold the website for an undisclosed sum. In 2012, while in his third year studying software development at the South China Institute of Software Engineering, he launched Super Curriculum.

The app allows students at more than 3,000 universities across the country to connect and share information about their courses, notes and other study materials. It was the first of its kind on the mainland and became an instant hit, drawing 10 million users, Yu said. After his appearance on the show, another five million students signed up, he said, pushing Super Curriculum to fourth place in the ranking of free apps in China's Apple Store.

Several venture capital companies have stepped in with investments, with the latest coming from the Alibaba Group, he said. He wouldn't specify the amount but said it was less than US$30 million.