China leapfrogs other countries in technology and stands tall without being chase-able. Chinese payment firm Ant Financial is the first and only hectocorn firm in the world. Hectocorn is a startup worth more than US$100 billion. Ant Financial manages the business activities of Alipay, a payment platform of multinational conglomerate Alibaba. Alipay handles nearly 68.7 percent of the Chinese mobile payment provider market. With this, Ant Financial has become the highest valued startup with no competitors whatsoever.
Ant Financial was founded in 2014 at Hangzhou. The company achieved this value creation in just five years which itself is an impressive feat. Not just that, China is home to 206 unicorn startups out of a global total of 494 startups spread across 24 countries. The United States comes behind China with 203 startups but the valuation of the startups puts China far ahead of the US.
Video sharing platform Bytedance, valued at $75 billion, comes second in the unicorn list. Bytedance is the parent company of TikTok. Ride sharing player Didi Chuxing comes third with 56 million dollars and financial asset firm Lufax, with a valuation of 38 billion dollars is listed fourth.
Chinese capital Beijing is home to 82 unicorns. China hosts most of the e-commerce and fintech companies. The total value of the Chinese fintech unicorns is worth 262 billion US dollars.
China has 33 unicorns in e-commerce with a total valuation of 62 billion dollars, followed by 22 fintech firms and 17 unicorns in media and entertainment sector. In the Artificial Intelligence category alone, China boasts of having 15 unicorns. China being the best consumer economy is the reason behind the successful startups
