From 50,000 yuan to a net worth of 19.5 billion, how did this female entrepreneur break out of the world?

Wang Yingmei

Wen | Feng Ma Niu (WeChat public number: Feng Lun Feng Ma Niu)

When the "2021 Hurun Global Self-Made Women Rich List" was released, Hurun once said: If you want to understand global female entrepreneurship, you must start from China. It is no accident that China has accounted for two-thirds of the world's most successful women entrepreneurs in the past decade. Only one of this year's top ten is not from China. In terms of new faces, China accounts for nearly 80% of the world this year. The entrepreneurial spirit of Chinese women entrepreneurs is unmatched by women in any other country in the world. These women entrepreneurs, who started their own businesses at an average age of 32, have now become a benchmark for women entrepreneurs around the world, and their stories are worth learning.

As the chairman of Yongtai Technology, Wang Yingmei is an excellent female entrepreneur who started from scratch, and in the "2021 Hurun Rich List", He Renbao and Wang Yingmei ranked 350th with a wealth of 19.5 billion yuan. In an interview, Wang Yingmei once said: Looking back at the original intention of starting a business, there was no particularly clear idea at that time, but just wanted to do something practical and live a better life.

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In the 1960s, Wang Yingmei was born into an ordinary family without any background. In 1987, after graduating from Huangyan Electric University majoring in chemical engineering, Wang Yingmei came to Huangyan Chemical No. 4 Factory as a technician. During the work, Wang Yingmei was very diligent, got up early every day to engage in research, and gradually grew into a technical backbone in the factory.

In 1992, with Deng Xiaoping's speech on his southern tour, many people in the system went to the sea to do business, and Wang Yingmei could not withstand the temptation. At that time, it just so happened that she was very unhappy at work. Wang Yingmei always wants to develop some new products, but the factory director is very conservative, does not allow her to do it, tell her to do her own thing, don't worry about it. Wang Yingmei felt very depressed about this, and felt that her talent had nowhere to go, as if it was useless.

After some thought, Wang Yingmei resolutely resigned despite all opposition, took 50,000 yuan and founded the Linhai Xingchen Chemical Factory with her partners, and served as the director of the factory. Wang Yingmei once said: When I first started a business, people said how much money you want to make, I said I want to earn 100,000 yuan, because the goal of life is 100,000 yuan.

As the first batch of entrepreneurs to eat crabs after Deng Xiaoping's speech on the southern tour, in that era of material scarcity, as long as they had the courage, ability, and ability to endure hardships, it was very easy to break out of a way of life. At that time, Wang Yingmei could not afford to buy new equipment to go to the second-hand market to find, could not find ready-made technology to grind with soil methods, racked her brains every day to engage in production, ran around to sell, and finally earned the first bucket of gold in her life.

In an interview, Wang Yingmei once recalled the difficulty of starting a business, she said: At that time, our family was about 20 kilometers to the factory, crossing a mountain, which was very inconvenient. We stayed in the factory all the time, and my son was in a kindergarten class, entrusted to the teacher, and could hardly be seen. When we had time in the evening, there was no bus, so I dreamed of having a motorcycle and could always go and see it when I thought of my son. After earning the first pot of gold, I discussed with my partner to buy a motorcycle, and after buying it, I rode to my son's kindergarten to see him as soon as possible.

However, soon, because of differences with partners on the development strategy of the enterprise, communication was not smooth, Wang Yingmei decided to go it alone. In 1997, Wang Yingmei founded the Linhai Yongli Fine Chemical Factory, which began to make a profit at the end of the year. In 1999, Wang Yingmei officially established Yongtai Technology.

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At the beginning of the establishment of Yongtai Technology, the products started were mainly dye intermediates. Although the product is mature and the income is good, the market competition of the product in the future is fierce. After passing professional market research, Wang Yingmei decided to transform and upgrade the product, which is relatively early in the industry.

At that time, the emerging chemical product - fine fluorine chemical industry became the breakthrough point of Yongtai's transformation and upgrading. The global fluorine chemical industry arose in the 1930s and did not take off in China until the 1950s. Fine fluorine chemical industry is basically the world of foreign investment, and the domestic mainly stays in the front-end industry with low added value. Based on the active chemical properties of fluorine, fine fluorine chemicals have quickly become key raw materials in the fields of medicine, pesticides, and electronic chemicals. The market prospect is large, the added value of the product is high, and the technical barriers are also quite high. Wang Yingmei once said: We have identified this road, and what we do is technology. Whoever has lower costs, better quality, and newer products will live and live better. But at the time, that choice faced many obstacles.

The first transformation product of Yongtai Technology is the intermediate of ofloxacin. From dyes to fluoride-containing pharmaceutical intermediates, it is not simply a step up, but a high mountain. Unlike dye intermediates, which react in only one step, pharmaceutical intermediates have a multi-step reaction and require a high degree of rigor. At that time, Wang Yingmei called on all cadres to follow her down to the workshop; the product yield and quality were not up to standard, and Wang Yingmei invited experts to the university and drilled the library to turn over the materials. It is by relying on the spirit of not accepting defeat and the courage to think and dare to do, the product has finally achieved a very precise precision. It is also this experience that has cast the soul of Yongtai Technology: heavy technology, dare to invest, and strive for innovation.

In 2005, Yongtai Technology and Zhejiang University established a "joint laboratory". In Wang Yingmei's view: medicine is a permanent sunrise industry, which is closely related to the people's happy life and has a broad space for growth. Yongtai's pharmaceutical intermediates are all fluorine-containing products, and the fluorine-containing in the preparation has become the current trend, so this is our opportunity. At the same time, the entire pharmaceutical industry chain, intermediates are relatively starting links, compared with the profit margin of API preparations is much lower, the market size is also limited, which is also the challenge for yongtai development and growth. Therefore, if Yongtai wants to develop, it must be extended to the downstream, and after this industrial chain is opened, we can make full use of the advantages of our own intermediates and APIs to quickly achieve a breakthrough in the preparation market.

Wang Yingmei said frankly: This road is not easy to walk. The quality of drugs is directly related to human safety and health, and the production of APIs and preparations must have a fairly standardized production concept and production system, and must also have a strong research and development as a backing, which is what we have been doing and investing in for so many years. We make full use of the capital market platform for integration, with a flexible salary system and incentive mechanism to build a research and development team, so many years have done a lot of work, to have today.

With the efforts of Wang Yingmei, Yongtai Technology first realized the strategic goal of vertical integration of the company's pharmaceutical sector from pharmaceutical intermediates, APIs to preparation production, and provided customized production, research and development and technical services for international pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer, Merck, Bayer and related enterprises. In an interview, Wang Yingmei once told a story, "Gilead spent more than a decade researching a new drug to cure hepatitis C. When they approached us, the product was not yet available and wanted us to cooperate with them in the development and production of the key raw material pentafluorophenol. I was surprised at the time, I said from an industrial point of view, you cured hepatitis C, won't there be no business in the future? They say we want to contribute to human life. Because of his words, I did it, and I think this is a very high-level thing, even if the research and development fails in the end. Later, we succeeded. This is a major breakthrough in the history of global medicine."

In 2008, Yongtai Technology was re-identified as the first batch of national high-tech enterprises. In 2009, Yongtai Technology was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Since then, Wang Yingmei has led the company to base itself on the pharmaceutical field while laying out the business layout of pesticides, electronic chemicals and new energy lithium battery materials. Wang Yingmei said: Yongtai Technology has always adhered to the development strategy of "market demand-oriented, technological innovation as the core, quality improvement as the guarantee, and high added value as the goal".

In 2021, with the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the market demand for the upstream lithium battery material industry has grown rapidly. Wang Yingmei seized the market opportunity, joined hands with the company's employees to quickly tackle the technical difficulties of electrolyte additives such as VC and FEC, achieved rapid production, and expanded the production capacity of lithium hexafluorophosphate and difluorosulfonimide lithium, accelerated the industrialization layout of the company's lithium battery materials, and won the opportunity for the company to earn market dividends.

Founded Yongtai Technology for more than 20 years, Wang Yingmei has always focused on the field of fluorine-containing fine chemicals, and now Yongtai Technology has become a manufacturer of fluorine-containing drugs, pesticides and new energy materials with a complete vertical integration industrial chain, and its products are exported to major international markets such as the United States, Europe, Japan and India.

In a speech in October 2021, Wang Yingmei shared: I founded Yongtai Technology in 1999, the company went public in 2009, and sharpened a sword in ten years. I've done a solid job for the first twenty years, and now that I'm in my third decade, I've always wanted to do what else and what I should do. I still have to respond to changes without change, the original intention and entrepreneurial spirit will not change, the core team and combat effectiveness will not change, the industry will not change, I want to take every day as the starting point. The background of "double carbon" may be a new opportunity for Yongtai Technology, new energy vehicles and energy storage, and the electronic chemicals used are exactly what Yongtai Technology has been developing. I'm never going to change my career, chemistry is so good and it's creating every day.

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"The flower of success, people only admire her current brilliance." However, her buds were soaked with the fountain of tears of struggle and sprinkled with the blood rain of sacrifice." Although she has been very successful, Wang Yingmei still works hard to learn and work hard, she is a very stable and pragmatic entrepreneur, just like the management philosophy of Yongtai Technology: to be a person in advance, to discipline oneself first, and to educate people before employing people.

It is worth mentioning that on the road to Wang Yingmei's success, her husband He Renbao has made a very big contribution. For more than 20 years, the two have had a clear division of labor, mutual understanding, mutual support, and have worked hand in hand to overcome countless storms.

While doing business, Wang Yingmei is also very happy with public welfare, she once said, "Life is limited, career is unlimited, the greatest happiness in life is to use limited financial resources to infinite dedication to society, I just did a little bit of my due obligation." 」

Nowadays, in the business world, there are more and more outstanding female leaders like Wang Yingmei, constantly breaking through the ceiling or boundaries created by gender, gaining a broader career space, and making remarkable contributions to the world. They are the business Mulan, but also the outstanding representative of excellent women, but also the role model and pride of new women in the new era. Applause for the excellent, independent, progressive, self-reliant women!

Sources

1. The official website of Zhejiang Yongtai Technology Co., Ltd

2. The list of Zhejiang businessmen in 2021 is announced! Are there faces you're familiar with? , Zhejiang released

3. Face the leader - Yongtai Technology Wang Yingmei: Love the "fluoride" cause and dream of a "hydrogen" life, Shanghai Securities News, Guo Chenglin

4. Guanghua Chuangxing | Wang Yingmei: A steady gold digger of the times, Peking University Guanghua EMBA

5. Wang Yingmei: Yongtai Goddess - Interview with Wang Yingmei, Chairman of Zhejiang Yongtai Technology Co., Ltd., Taizhou Merchant Magazine, Meng Shaohua

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The author of this article | Dajun Editor-in-Chief| Wang Tao

Editor| Chen Runjiang Consultant | Wang Shuqi