Yoshikazu Tanaka: Asia’s top internet billionaire
Yoshikazu Tanaka, 33 is the world’s second youngest self-made billionaire after Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Asia’s richest person who made his/her fortune via the internet.
According to Forbes, he’s worth USD1.6 billion.
He is one of only 3 billionaires in Asia under the age of 35, and among the 3, the only one self-made.
He founded Japan’s second-biggest social networking site, gree.jp, in 2004, of which he owns 51%. It has about 15 million users (up from 8 million a year ago) and was listed in December 2008.
Japan’s top social networking site is Kenji Kasahara’s Mixi (18 million users), yet Gree is the bigger earning site. Kasahara is worth USD720 million.
His site concentrates on “fun, easy mobile games,” all developed inhouse. New members to his site get “a big-eyed manga-style avatar in underwear.” Then they can go shop for clothes and accessories for it (fancy hats, hairdos, fishing rods, food, even perhaps custom usb drives), then use those in games like virtual fishing, virtual gardening and virtual pet grooming.
Each virtual item cost about USD2: 80% of the site’s income come from sales of these things.
He also forges alliances with telecom companies, eg, KDDI owns 7% of gree, and allows users to access Gree’s website from the home page of KDDI’s mobile phones. 90% of Gree subscribers play games on their mobile phones, and many of them play to pass time while telecommuting.
SALUTE!
