If you use an Apple, Samsung or Huawei device, chances are you’ve bought something from Zhou Qunfei’s company. Lens Technology supplies these companies with touch screens. And they have made Zhou the world’s richest self-made woman.

With Forbes estimating her net worth to be at US$9.6 billion, it’s hard to believe how far she has come given her rough start in life. With her father losing a finger and being blinded in a factory accident and her mother dying when Zhou was just five, the odds were stacked against Zhou from the beginning.

At 16, she dropped out of high school to work at a factory while taking night classes. By 1993, she had eventually saved up a grand sum of HK$20,000 (US$2,570) to start her own business – a family-run watch lens workshop that operated out of a three-bedroom flat.

She grew the business and caught her big break when she won a contract with Motorola in 2003.

On the 22nd anniversary of the establishment of her first start-up, Lens Technology had an IPO listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2015. Forbes listed it as having a market cap of US$11.4 billion that year.

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Yang Luhan

The world may soon overcome its organ donor shortage, starting with the help of gene-edited pig kidneys.

US-based biotech company eGenesis, received US$100 million in funding last year to make this a reality, a firm co-founded by Yang Luhan, who also serves as its chief scientific officer.

Using swine as substitutes has its complications. Pig DNA features historical sequences from viruses that have slipped genes into their chromosomes. These porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) can produce infectious viral particles. But Yang and her team have used gene editing to produce pigs that are free of these.

This gave momentum to the idea of xenotransplantation. Yang stated that eGenesis will collaborate with its sister company, Hangzhou Qihan Bio to further the concept.

Yang, who was born and raised in a small town in China’s southwest, holds degrees in both biology and psychology from Peking University, and a PhD in human biology and translational medicine from Harvard Medical School.

She nearly failed her PhD qualifying exams because of her limited English skills. But luckily, she managed to pass with the recommendations and guidance of her Harvard mentor and eventual co-founder of eGenesis, George Church.

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Gong Haiyan

While in graduate school in Shanghai, Gong Haiyan paid 500 yuan (US$71.50) to find her match online.

But she was disappointed to find that there were many fake profiles on the dating site. When she asked for a refund, she was laughed at and told that her looks were the reason she was not successful.

It motivated her to set up her own dating service from her college dorm. That site, jiayuan.com, went on to become China’s largest online dating website. Gong personally encouraged the first 1,000 members to enrol, the first being her best friend.

In 2011, the company listed on the Nasdaq stock market. But the sweetest victory of all was that Gong eventually met her husband through her own site. But the path to tech entrepreneurship did not always seem a likely match for her, as Gong was raised in a poor farming family in Hunan province.

Lucy Peng Lei

Lucy Peng Lei is best known as one of the 18 co-founders of Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group.

But like fellow founder Jack Ma Yun, Peng started as a teacher.

After earning a degree in business administration at the Hangzhou Institute of Commerce in 1994, she taught at the Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics. She left her teaching post in 1999 to join Alibaba on a starting monthly salary of 500 yuan.

Peng has since served as Alibaba’s chief human resources officer and is also the co-founder and CEO of Ant Financial and executive chairwoman of Lazada Group.

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Wang Laichun

Wang Laichun used to work in the factory of Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology. Today, her previous employer is one of the most important clients of Wang’s electronic connectors company Luxshare Precision Industry.

The former factory girl spent a decade learning the ropes at Foxconn before venturing out to start her own business manufacturing cables and power cords. By 2014, at 46, she was named one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.

Bloomberg reported that Luxshare’s stocks outperformed virtually every major stock traded in the Asia-Pacific in 2019. It even overtook Apple, whose AirPods were a big driver of Luxshare’s stellar performance.

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