China's Richest 2020: King Of Beverages Zong Qinghou Aims To Revitalize Wahaha

When Zong Qinghou travels abroad, he likes to visit local supermarkets. The 74-year-old founder of China’s largest privately held beverage company Hangzhou Wahaha Group isn’t shopping for himself, but doing a little firsthand market research. For example, when Zong visited Singapore in October, he bought boxes of fruit-flavored beer. Staff back in China then study these samples to see if they could be imported into China, or adapted to local tastes.

“Every new product can be used as a reference,” says Zong in an exclusive interview with Forbes Asia on the sidelines of the Forbes Global CEO conference last month in Singapore.

Zong, who is chairman of Wahaha, is now under pressure to come up with fresh product ideas to rekindle consumer interest in his company, that he’s spent more than three decades running.