Shopee Founder Li Xiaodong Becomes The Richest Person In Singapore, How Much Is His Wealth?

Shopee boss Li Xiaodong becomes the richest person in Singapore (StraitTimes)

JAKARTA – The Shopee and Garena platforms are under the auspices of Sea Group Ltd, which is led by Li Xiaodong or better known as Forrest Li. The founder and CEO of the Sea Group has become one of the richest men in Singapore. The Bloomberg Index says that Li has a net worth of 20.2 billion US dollars (Rp. 287.7 trillion).

Li occupies the 98th position as the richest person in the world. Li's wealth has increased after Sea's American holdings have increased by about 67 percent in 2021. His wealth has surpassed that of Nippon Paint paint company boss Goh Cheng Liang, who has a net worth of 17.8 billion US dollars (Rp. 254 trillion). In addition to Goh Cheng Liang, Li has also managed to pass the wealth of the founder of a Singapore-based health company named Mindray, Li Xiting with a fortune of 17.9 billion US dollars (Rp255 billion).

Sea Group went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017. The company has become the most valuable company in the Southeast Asia region based on its market capitalization which has crossed 180 billion US dollars or Rp. 2,564 trillion, experiencing a significant increase of 3,500% since the IPO.

Now Sea Group has dominated Southeast Asia with its Shopee e-commerce services, Garena gaming and finance. In Singapore itself, Sea has obtained a digital bank license since last December 2020. Sea Group has also acquired one of the banks in Indonesia, namely PT Bank Kesejahteraan Ekonomi (BKE) since early 2021 as reported by Fortune.

Analyst Nathan Naidu from Bloomberg Intelligence said that Sea Group's move in the financial services sector will smooth out SeaMoney's business in providing loan services, insurance, wealth management, and other financial services in the Southeast Asia region.

The use of the SeaMoney digital wallet itself has increased by almost 150 percent from the previous year, reaching US$4.1 billion or Rp. 58.5 trillion. Li revealed that his company's revenue last August had reached US$2.3 billion (Rp32 trillion).

Short Biography of Li Xiaodong

Forrest Li or Li Xiaodong was born in Tianjin China 43 years ago. Li decided to move to Singapore and chose to become a Singaporean citizen. Bloomberg reports that Li studied engineering at Shanghai University. During his college days, Li often spent his nights playing games in internet cafes.

Li then continued his studies at Stanford University and earned a Master's degree in Business Administration. At the campus, Li was nicknamed “Forrest”, because his lecturers had difficulty pronouncing his name. Li had chosen the name after watching Tom Hanks' film Forrest Gump.

In 2009, Li founded Garena with guidance and investment provided by Chinese giant Tencent. Not long after, Garena changed its name to Sea Ltd. which stands for Southeast Asia (Southeast Asia) as the area where Garena was founded. After that, Sea developed an e-commerce business, so Shopee was born. The company has also presented a financial service called AirPay which was later renamed SeaMoney.