45-year-old entrepreneur, Zhou Qunfei, is both China’s as well as the world’s richest self-made woman, says the latest edition on personal wealth by the Hurun Report.
Nicknamed the “Touchscreen Queen”, she is the founder of Lens Technology, one of the world’s leading suppliers of the highly sophisticated and ultra-thin cover glass used in laptops, tablets and mobile devices, including in the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy.
She owns a $27 million estate in Hong Kong, and has a reported net worth of $7.8 billion, although it was only back in March of this year, when her company was first listed on the stock market that Zhou rose to international prominence. She still maintains a low profile, rarely giving interviews or making public appearances.
Born in an impoverished farming village in Hunan province in central China, Zhou had a hard upbringing. Her mother died when she was five, and she had to care for her father after he lost a finger and most of his eyesight in an accident. At the age of 16 she moved to Shenzen and laboured in a factory where she manufactured watch lenses. The conditions, she said, were harsh. “I worked from 8am to midnight, and sometimes until 2am.” She quit after just 3 months but her resignation letter impressed her boss so much that he offered her the first of several promotions if she stayed.
Three years later she set up a successful rival company of her own.
In 2003, Motorola called Ms Zhou to ask if she could help develop the Razr V3.
When Apple picked Lens Technology to help build their iPhone, that was when everything exploded.
It was her rural background that helped inspire the invention that would help Qunfei make billions.
She says when she was a child she would watch the rain falling on lotus leaves – which later inspired her to create Lens Technology’s patented, scratch-resistant coating used on a range of Apple devices.
‘Droplets of water would roll around the surface of a lotus leaf and not leave any trace,’ she said.
‘If it wasn’t for my primary school teacher reminding me to be observant I may not have had the inspiration to think of my invention.
Her office has a small apartment attached so she can be on site day and night if necessary and in 2007 she had the company headquarters moved to Changsha in Hunan province.
Zhou hasn’t lost touch with the work ethic, skills and hands-on knowledge that she learned in her younger years, nor with the home province she grew up in.
“She’ll sometimes sit down and work as an operator to see if there’s anything wrong with the process,” said James Zhao, a general manager at Lens Technology. “That will put me in a very awkward position. If there’s a problem, she’d say, ‘Why didn’t you see that?’”
Having built up her fortune from nearly nothing, Zhou has come to symbolise other Chinese women who have done the same, a rarity in business. In Japan, there is not a single self-made female billionaire, according to Forbes. In the United States and Europe, most women who are billionaires secured their wealth through inheritance.
Her cousin Zhou Xinyi remarked “In the Hunan language, we call women like her ‘ba de man,’ which means a person who dares to do what others are afraid to do.”
Source: Source: shanghaiist.com