Background
Nan Cunhui is of Han nationality and was born in Yueqing, a small city in the Southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang.
存辉 南
Nan Cunhui is of Han nationality and was born in Yueqing, a small city in the Southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang.
He was educated locally and started to work at 13.
At the age of 13 he began work as a shoemaker in order to support his family. Life was tough in Wenzhou and Nan Cunhui’s first business was set up as a means of survival. He started a small commercial venture dealing in electrical appliances with a small amount of seed capital, saved from his work as a shoemaker. Together with his former school-friend Hu Chengzhong, a tailor, in 1984 Nan Cunhui founded a factory for switches. However, after a short period, they went into different ventures. Nan Cunhui founded CHINT Electric Appliance while Hu founded Delixi Electric Appliance.
By the early 1990s, Nan Cunhui had developed CHINT into a joint stock company. In addition to US$150 000 invested by his brother-in-law, Nan’s own brother and other relatives also became shareholders of his company. As a result his personal ownership in the company decreased from 100 percent to 60 percent while his relatives owned the rest of the stocks. By means of mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances, Nan began to transform the shareholder structure in 1994. All in all he merged about 50 companies, creating a conglomerate with separate ownership and management structures. As the number of shareholders increased to 40, Nan’s personal interest in the conglomerate decreased to 40 percent. However, CHINT’s net assets increased from RMB4 million (US$500 000) to RMB50 million (US$6 million) in 2003. In three years, Nan’s personal income increased by a factor of 19.
The CHINT Group is one of the biggest manufacturers of electric industrial devices in China. With net assets of 1.7 billion yuan in 2006, CHINT had six branches, more than 50 holding companies and 800 mutual partnerships. With 16 000 employees worldwide, the company is currently ranked eighth among the 100 largest private enterprises in China, and has been recognised as a famous brand by both industry and government. Since 2006, CHINT has become a market leader in the power transmission and distribution industry and in low-voltage electrical products in China. With around US$2 billion in sales turnover, which accounts for approximately 40 percent of the share of the market of low-voltage electrical appliances in China, CHINT has also become one of the top five companies in this area in the world. More recently, the CHINT Group has founded a research and development center in Silicon Valley, and established marketing networks in the USA, Brazil, South Africa and the Middle East as well as in several European countries. Looking forward, Nan and CHINT plan to make an IPO on the stock market to further improve the company’s financial position and administrative capability.
As a prominent Chinese entrepreneur, Nan Cunhui has received many individual honors. In 2002 he was named as an ‘outstanding business person in China’ and one of the ‘Top Ten Most Outstanding Young Entrepreneurs.’ In addition, Nan has served as a representative to the Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC).
