TOP 100 LEADERS

Title: Founder, Chairman and CEO Company: BYD Industry: Automotive

Originally a battery researcher, Wang Chuanfu built BYD from a mobile phone battery manufacturer in the 1990s into the world’ s largest maker of electric vehicles. It is now the topselling car brand in China and one of the largest global producers of EV batteries through its subsidiary FinDreams Battery. He studied metallurgy at the Central South University and earned a master’ s degree from GRINM Group, before founding BYD at 29 years old. Unlike legacy automakers that rely on a huge network of third-party suppliers, his fundamental strategy is vertical integration. Under his direction, BYD controls almost its entire supply chain. The company employs more than 100,000 engineers and even manufactures its own moulds, dies and production line tooling. This has helped to reduce its vehicle development cycle significantly and make it one of the world’ s biggest, and fastest-growing, automakers.

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