Tencent outruns Alibaba, becomes first Chinese tech firm valued over $500 Bn

Leaving behind China most popular tech firm Alibaba, Tencent has now become first Chinese tech firm to cross $500 billion mark in value.

Tencent, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, rallied to reach HK$418.80 to give it a market cap of HK$3.99 billion which takes past the $500 billion mark, reported Techcrunch. Alibaba remained second with $474 billion.

With this rise, 19 years old firm entered in the half-a-trillion-dollar club — which includes Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.

Last week Tencent posted a profit of 18 billion RMB ($2.7 billion) on revenue of 65.2 billion RMB ($9.8 billion) for Q3 2017. Overall profit was up 69 percent year-on-year and revenue rose by 61 percent thanks to Tencent’s games business. Following this Tencent's share price just doubled.

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A US$9,000 investment in the company’s 2004 IPO would now be worth US$1 million, the report added.

Tencent's India investment

All the big successful firms of China such as, Baidu (search), Alibaba (e-commerce) and Tencent (instant messaging and gaming) have been bullish about India and already doing core businesses in the country. So far, Tencent has invested close to $1.5 billion in Indian start-ups, including $700 million in Flipkart.

Till date, it has invested in India-based unicorns Flipkart, messaging app Hike, health portal Practo and Uber rival Ola. Tencent is also in talks with Swiggy to invest $50 million.

Tencent is backing Indian startups because it thinks India is behind China by 5-10 years. Tencent wants to ensure they don’t miss out on India. It is placing early bets in the country to take advantage of the markets.

There are around 465 million Internet users in 2017, according to IAMAI report. According to projections by a US government agency, India is well poised to become the third-largest economy by 2030, surpassing four developed nations Japan, Germany, Britain and France.

According to the Industry insiders, Tencent will not spare any expense to get the upper hand in India. And may make more investment in the country.