Zhou Qunfei, Founder and CEO of Lens Technology, is a China based self-made billionaire. While most of the 187 women billionaires became rich due to inheritance, 44 year old Ms. Zhou is one of the 19 self-made billionaire woman, fighting head to head with Chen Lihua for the position of wealthiest female entrepreneur in China. After the public listing of her company on the Shenzhen ChiNext market in March 2015, her net worth has reached US$10 billion, making her the richest woman in China.  As of 16th August 2015, she owns 7.7 Billion Dollar.
Ms. Zhou was born in a tiny village in the Hunan Province of central China, a farming community about two hours south of Changsha, the provincial capital. Her father, a skilled craftsman, later lost a finger and most of his eyesight in an industrial accident, before even she was born. Her mother died when she was 5.
Belonging to a poor family, Ms. Zhou dropped out of School at 16 despite of her excellent academic records. Later she travelled south, in search of a better Job and started living with her Uncle’s Family. With the dream of becoming a fashion designer, she could only manage to land a job on a factory floor in the City of Shenzhen. She used to earn $1 a day for making watch lenses.

 

Due to harsh conditions, monotonous and boring job, Ms. Zhou resigned. And in 1993, at the age of 22 she started her own company with the help of her relatives and savings of $3000.  At the new company, Ms. Zhou did it all. She repaired and designed factory machinery. She taught herself complex screen-printing processes and difficult techniques that allowed her to improve prints for curved glass. Her cousins call her a person who dares to do what others are afraid to.
She caught her big break in 2001, when her company won a profitable contract to make mobile phone screens for the Chinese electronics giant TCL Corporation. Later in 2003, she received an unexpected phone call from executives at Motorola. They asked if she was willing to help them develop a glass screen for their new device, the Razr V3. She said yes and soon after, orders started rolling in from other mobile-phone makers like HTC, Nokia and Samsung. What brought Lens Technology to prominence was the order from Apple who chooses Lens Technology as its Glass supplier for touch screen based Smartphone, Iphone in 2007. Lens Technology is now one of the leading suppliers of the cover glass used in laptops, tablets and mobile devices, including the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy
It’s because of the passion and hands-on of Ms. Zhou, instead of 100 of competitors; Lens Technology stands strong as a Tier 1 Player.  Ms. Zhou designs and choreographs nearly every step of the process, a detailed-oriented approach she traces to her childhood. Lens operates round the clock, with 75,000 workers spread across three main manufacturing facilities that occupy about 800 acres in the Changsha region.

 

The Story of Zhou Qunfei has not only inspired the Chinese women, but it has inspired many women around the globe, who fear to become an entrepreneur.

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