It’s not a good time for the popular social media app TikTok in India. The app is facing threats of getting banned in states including West Bengal, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. But the 36-year-old founder of the app Zhang Yiming takes criticism in his stride.
Zhang, a former employee of Microsoft, left the company because he felt stifled from corporate laws. He overcame the rough patch in his life and emerged as a billion-dollar entrepreneur through an innovative startup ByteDance.
During his college days, Zhang used to create websites and solve technical problems to earn income. After completion of studies, he started his career in Kuxun in 2006. A year later, he was promoted to the post of technical director. In 2008, he joined Microsoft. After quitting Microsoft, he joined the startup Fanfou but couldn’t continue there for long. In 2009, he started his own company, 99fang.com. Three years later, he quit the business and started ByteDance. Surprisingly enough, his vision of employing Artificial Intelligence was not supported by the venture capitalists. Later on, Susquehanna International Group came forward to provide the firm fund. Sequoia Capital, which initially refused to fund the company, invested $100 Mn in ByteDance in 2014 which underlines the success of Zhang Yiming as an entrepreneur.
Today, ByteDance is widely considered as the world’s most valuable startup. ByteDance is valued at $75 Bn whereas Zhang’s personal wealth is estimated at $13 Bn.
ByteDance ventured into short video platform through its popular app, TikTok. The company is also parenting a news app, TouTiao, which has a user base of 13 Mn. Banking giants including Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital China, Morgan Stanley and many more have also invested in ByteDance.
