Tencent is a world-leading internet and technology company that develops innovative products and services to improve the quality of life of people around the world.
Founded in 1998 with its headquarters in Shenzhen, China, Tencent’s guiding principle is to use technology for good. Our communication and social services connect more than one billion people worldwide, helping them keep in touch with friends and family, access transportation, pay for daily necessities, and even be entertained.
Tencent also publishes some of the world’s most popular video games and other high-quality digital content, enriching interactive entertainment experiences for people around the globe.
We offer cloud computing, advertising, FinTech, and other enterprise services too, to support our clients’ digital transformation and business growth.
What do you think makes the company unique?
Tencent helps physical industries with digitalisation. Based on the principle of “product is king, user scenario is first”, we hope to be the best product in the industry on the key product track. We have shaped the industry benchmark and independently developed 400+ enterprise-level applications.
We create technological benchmarks, integrate the digital world and the real world to build a “strong base” for full-true interconnection, investing more than 150 billion in research and development infrastructure, and build “hard support” for digital-real integration. We set an ecological benchmark and cooperate with 10,000+ ecological partners to promote industrial digitalisation. In the past three years, we have served more than two million customers together, creating a win-win situation for the industry.
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How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
In the past three years, with repeated COVID-19 outbreaks and a downturn in the global economy, companies have faced many challenges. In the past few years, Tencent itself has been transforming and upgrading through digital technology. After three years of hard work, we have moved all of Tencent’s own businesses to run on Tencent Cloud. Through more flexible resource scheduling and more agile response to changes in supply and demand, IT costs alone can save the company 3 billion yuan per year.
In the past few years, Tencent has also played different roles in different projects. However, we also slowly discovered that there are specialisations in the technology industry, so this year we have made a strategic transformation, focusing on platform-based products, supporting ISV (Independent Software Vendor) partners to integrate our products, cultivating more service providers, and becoming Tencent Product experts.
Over the past year or so, we have repeatedly emphasised health and sustainability. The biggest change is that we have consciously reduced businesses such as large collections and resales that do not match our capabilities and cost structure, and focused on building core competitiveness. The self-developed products, as well as the ecology required by self-developed products, are slowly moving towards a business model with accumulation.
What can we hope to see from Tencent in the future?
The development of China’s industrial Internet in the future presents three major trends: First, lean manufacturing is the digital goal of many manufacturing companies. Second, use collaborative tools to improve decision-making and execution efficiency. Finally, digitise precision marketing to identify user needs and capture market opportunities. Practice and experience have further proved the important value of the industrial Internet, and also strengthened Tencent’s goal of helping the physical industry with digitalisation.
In the future, Tencent will do its best to be a “digital assistant” for the industry. With strong technology, good products, and a wide ecosystem, it will help the real industry to create sustainable innovation and competitiveness. At the same time, it will also promote the healthy development of its own business and strengthen its muscles. And endurance, to accompany the long-distance running of the enterprise.
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