PHOTO BY: GOH CHAI HIN--AFP FOR TIME DIGITAL
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Founder and chief executive, Internet Technologies China NET
WORTH $4 million (est.)
AGE 33
E-MAIL charles@sohoo.com.cn
BIO Zhang sees himself as a Chinese version of the
Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Fine, except there is no Sand Hill
Road in Beijing where a young, ambitious risk taker can scare up
a few million dollars to get his dream off the ground. Enter some
friends Zhang met while getting his Ph.D. in physics at M.I.T.
They ponied up $225,000, enough to get ITC started back in 1997.
Today ITC runs Sohoo, China's most popular search engine and Web
destination.
1998 POWER PLAY Sohoo (Chinese for search fox) was
the first search engine to use a Chinese language. This may not
sound all that exciting--search engines, after all, look about as
exciting as an old card catalogue--but the build-out of the
Internet in China is big business. As foreign companies look for
ways to get recognized in the emerging Chinese market, many are
advertising on Sohoo, including Microsoft, Intel, HP and even
domestic enterprises such as Beijing Beer.
PLACE YOUR BETS By the
end of June, China had 1.2 million people on the Net. The State
Statistical Bureau expects that number to grow to 5 million by
the year 2000. Zhang plans to take ITC public sometime in the
future. Lots of investors can't wait.
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