Asian Australian Entrepreneurs: Young Rich List (2022)

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Asian Australians Entrepreneurs on the AFR Young Rich List

With the rise of Asian American entrepreneurship over the last decade or so – with the likes of Eric Yuan (Founder of Zoom), Jensen Huang (Founder of NVIDIA), Jerry Yang (founder of Yahoo), Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube), Justin Kan (co-founder of Twitch) and 100s of others – it made me wonder… who are the notable Asian-Australian entrepreneurs of today?

Entrepreneurship requires a unique blend of drive, passion, hard work and personality to ensure a young business can survive the ups & downs. Although Australia is such a small market when it comes to business, there are quite a few great examples of young Asian-Australians (under the age of 40) who decided to take the path less travelled.

*added an additional table for the 2022 list. Some have fallen off the list (age, decline in valuation, etc) whereas there are also some newcomers (denoted with an asterisk).

Young Rich List 2020 ​

NameWealthCompanyDescription
Melanie Perkins $3.43b (combined with Cliff Obrecht)CanvaGraphic Design Platform
Jack Zhang$410mAirwallexCross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion
Fung Lam & Werner Liu$273mNew AimImporter and online retail (ecommerce) and wholesale business
Max Li$201mAirwallexCross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion
Jacob Dai$158mAirwallexCross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion
Selvam Sinnappan & Winston Wijeyeratne$150mSleeping DuckMattress E-tailer
Ashik Ahmed$148mDeputyShift Rostering Software
Anson Zhang$59mOne Stop WarehouseSolar Panels & Batteries Wholesaler
Jane Lu$37mShowpoOnline Fashion Retailer
Jeff Yu$37mOne Stop WarehouseSolar Panels & Batteries Wholesaler
Tim Fung$30mAirtaskerOdd-jobs Marketplace Platform

Young Rich List 2022 (Update)

NameWealthCompanyDescription
Melanie Perkins $13.7b (combined with Cliff Obrecht)CanvaGraphic Design Platform
Jack Zhang$957mAirwallexCross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion
Max Li$453mAirwallexCross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion
Jacob Dai$360mAirwallexCross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion
Jack Lu, Sidney Zhang & Zedd Yin*$200mMagic EdenNFT Marketplace
Werner Liu$120m (no longer combined with Fung Lam after split)New AimImporter and online retail (ecommerce) and wholesale business
Vu Tran* $110m (combined with 3 other Go1 founders)*Go1Corporate training platform
Anson Zhang$71mOne Stop WarehouseSolar Panels & Batteries Wholesaler
Jane Lu$53mShowpoOnline Fashion Retailer
Rayn Ong*$35mArchangel VenturesStartup Investor

I hope we get to see more Asian-Australians not only achieve entrepreneurial success but rather than following the money, that they prioritise happiness, company culture and purpose over profits. Money should ideally be a by-product of one’s passion – you don’t need a billion dollars to be happy (I’ve covered several small business stories in Australia).     

Hopefully, we won’t see any of these Asian-Australian entrepreneurs & founders get caught up in any unethical behaviour and craziness that engulfs the Silicon Valley ecosystem (don’t be like Stefan Qin).  Watch this space.