Terry Gou 101: Who is the Famous Taiwanese Businessman? In this article on Zatrun.com, we will cover in detail everything you need to know about Terry Gou, the famous Taiwanese businessman that our readers are curious about.
Who is Terry Gou?
Terry Gou, born on October 8, 1950 in Banqiao District, New Taipei, Taiwan, is the founder and current chairman of Hon Hai Precision (also known as Foxconn), the world’s largest electronic manufacturing services (EMS) company. About 800,000 workers work at the company’s facilities, which have factories in various parts of the world, especially in China.
Gou has two brothers, and they became successful businessmen in Tai-Chiang Gou and Tai-Cheng Gou. Terry Gou and his first wife, Serena Lin, have a son who works in the film industry, born in 1976, and a daughter who works in the financial industry, born in 1978. In 2000, Gou and his wife established a foundation in the education sector with the aim of donating one-third of its income to the foundation. Serena resigned from her job to manage the foundation’s affairs following the death of her mother.
in 2005, Serena Lin died of breast cancer at the age of 55, and in 2007, Gou’s younger brother, Tai-Cheng Guo, died of leukemia in Beijing. In 2008, Gou remarried to a choreographer named Delia Tseng, and the couple had a daughter on April 30, 2009 and a son on November 19, 2010. He bought Roztěž Castle near Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic for $ 30 million in 2002.
Establishment of Hon Hai Company
Terry Gou founded Hon Hai company in Taiwan in 1974 with 7500 USD initial capital and 10 workers. The company was manufacturing various plastic parts for TVs in a rented warehouse in Tucheng district, a suburb of Taipei. It was a turning point for him when he won the contract to make connectors for the controllers of the Atari 2600 console in 1980. Later, in the 1980s, he went on an 11-month business trip to the United States.
To save money, Terry Gou occasionally slept in the back of the rental car and even rented a hotel room near an IBM factory to secure a meeting with the company. He even received a connector order from IBM by appointment at the end of his three-day effort. As an aggressive sales person, he could also take orders from the companies he visited without an appointment.
The Growth of His Empire
The company opened its first factory in Shenzhen in 1988, which is currently its largest facility. It has grown significantly in China by vertically integrating assembly processes and worker facilities. The factory complex included housing for workers, food and medical facilities, and even a chicken farm for the factory cafeteria.
Hon Hai started manufacturing computer cases for Compaq desktops in 1996. This led to simple November orders from HP, IBM and Apple, allowing the company to become a giant in the consumer electronics industry. Terry Gou, who owns a 30% stake in the publicly traded company today, was named one of the 179 richest people in the world by Forbes magazine in 2011 with an income of $ 5.7 billion.
