Meet TikTok Billionaire Zhang Yiming: He Is China's 10th Richest With A Net Worth Of S$22.6B

The billionaire founder behind Bite Dance is far less popular than the video sharing tool that has become the most downloaded app in the world.

Tik Tok may have been a worldwide success, but many people outside of China don't know about the man behind the app.

How did a locally trained software engineer overtake numerous news portals and video apps like Tencent Holdings and Sina Corporation?

Despite being the 10th richest person in China with a total value of US 16 16.2 billion (22 22.6 billion), Zhang Yiming is very private and has little information about his personal life.

Zhang Was Ambitious Since Young

Zhang Yaming was born in 1983 in Fujian Province, China. Zhang's parents were government employees. Prior to opening an electronics processing factory, her father worked for the municipality's Science and Technology Commission and her mother was a nurse.

In Zhang's childhood, the official topics his parents talked about were mostly friends who have come abroad with new technology or are developing a special product.

His family linked him to business stories and because of this he became interested in business and innovation from a young age.

Unlike other parents with institutional backgrounds who have strict control over their children, Zhang's parents encouraged him to try new things.

In his high school days, he wanted to be a fellow scientist. Although he excelled in chemistry during his high school days, he found that adding chemicals to chemical test tubes was useless and dangerous.

He wanted to be part of what he was doing, and chemistry didn't give him anything.

"Your behavior and your output need to be changed quickly. And the computer is the fastest," Zhang said.

In 2001, he enrolled at Nankai University in Tianjin, where he worked in microelectronics before turning to software engineering. He graduated from the university in 2005.