Alibaba’s Jack Ma versus Xiaomi’s Lei Jun: who is really Asia’s richest man?

In September, Jack Ma was crowned China’s richest person after his company Alibaba set the record for the world’s biggest IPO. And just last week, many deemed him the richest man in Asia, surpassing property tycoon Li Ka-shing.

But yesterday, a US$200 million investment into appliance manufacturer Midea by smartphone maker Xiaomi revealed some new numbers that might make the analysts reconsider. As it turns out, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun owns a whopping 77.8 percent of his company – way more than Jack Ma owns of Alibaba at just 6.3 percent.

Ma’s net worth has fluctuated greatly since the IPO due to surges and dips in stock prices, but he’s now estimated to be worth between US$28.7 billion and US$23.3 billion, according to Bloomberg and Forbes, respectively.

Xiaomi last month began fundraising at a valuation of US$40 billion to US$50 billion – higher than Sony and Lenovo. While that figure is hotly contested, Xiaomi’s explosive sales growth means it’s not totally far-fetched.

That puts Lei Jun’s share of Xiaomi at US$31 billion to US$38.9 billion, well above Ma and somewhere in the range of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Keep in mind, however, neither Ma’s nor Lei’s entire fortunes can be estimated solely on their flagship companies. Jack Ma owns a majority stake in Alipay, China’s leading online payments service provider, while Lei owns a sizable chunk of software company Kingsoft. Both are prominent private investors as well.

In 2013, Xiaomi disclosed a valuation of US$10 billion after its previous round of funding. We won’t have a real figure until Xiaomi closes its next round, but skeptics say Xiaomi’s revenue-to-valuation ratio is too high, even outpacing Apple.

See: Documents show Xiaomi made just $56M in profit in 2013

(Hat-tip to 36kr)