Zong Qinghou, the founder of Chinese bottled water giant Wahaha Group, has died at 79.
The billionaire passed away at 10.30 am local time on February 25, the company said in a statement. A memorial service will be held on February 28 in Hangzhou, its home base in eastern Zhejiang province.
Zong set up Hangzhou-based Wahaha from scratch, turning it into one of China’s largest beverage companies. He was ranked the country’s wealthiest businessman in 2010 and 2012 by the Hurun Research Institute’s China Rich List. With a fortune of $13.1 billion, he ranked 31st on the list last year.
Born in 1945, Zong became one of the “sent-down youth” in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, which saw him spend 15 years working in the countryside.
Zong developed his first product, the Wahaha children’s nutritional drink, in 1988. His company was later renamed Wahaha Nutritional Food Factory and had an annual output value of 100 million yuan ($13.9 million) and a net profit of 22.2 million yuan ($3.1 million) in 1990.
Wahaha Nutritional Food Factory merged with state-owned Hangzhou Canned Food Factory in a deal worth more than 80 million yuan in 1991 and turned the canned food factory’s loss of more than 40 million yuan into a profit after just three months.