Terry Gou

Terry Gou’s first wife was Serena Lin. The couple welcomed two children, a son and a daughter. While Gou’s son works in the film and real estate industries, his daughter who worked in the financial sector took up leadership of her mother's charity after the latter’s death in 2005.

In 2007, Gou’s youngest brother, Tony Gou died of leukaemia. The following year, he married his second wife, choreographer Delia Tseng on July 26. Tseng and Gou have three children. Together, they have decided to give 90% of Gou's wealth away.

Gou has been involved in a lot of charitable works. He has funded non government organizations and charitable institutions.

Terry Gou was born on October 8, 1950 in Banqiao, Taipei County, Taiwan. His father was a career police officer. His parents had lived in mainland China’s Shanxi Province until 1949 when they fled to Taiwan.

He was the first-born son of the couple. He had two younger brothers, Tai-Chiang Gou and Tony Gou both of whom became successful businessmen as well.

Gou received his formal education from an elementary school post which he attended college.

Upon graduating from college, Terry Gou started working in a rubber factory. His early days also included stints working at a grinding wheel and a medicine plant. Working odd jobs continued until he turned 24.

In 1974, Gou founded his own company Hon Hai. With as little as just $7500 and a staff of ten elderly workers, he started the business of manufacturing plastic parts of television sets in a rented shed in Tucheng, a suburb of Taipei.

The initial breakthrough in Gou’s career came when he received an order to make console joystick from Atari in 1980. Not only did it give his business a new prospect but it also helped him in achieving economic prosperity.

With a vision to further expand his career, Gou went on an 11-month trip to the US, looking for customers. Blessed with aggressive sales skills, he contacted many companies despite being uninvited and managed to get additional orders.

In 1988, Gou set up his first factory in mainland China in Shenzhen. Till date, the factory remains the largest one amongst the many that he has. Expansion took a colossal size when he started vertically integrating the assembly process. The campus site where his factory was located turned into a single-place solution for Gou with all facilities streamlined within it – housing, hospital, dinning, chicken farming, and even burial ground.

Terry Gou’s career touched great heights after his company started building chassis for Compaq desktops in 1996. This served as the biggest breakthrough for Foxconn as the company went on to become the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.

As per company reports in 2015, Foxconn generated a revenue of $136.12 billion, making it the fourth-largest information technology company by revenue. Gou’s net worth which was worth $5.6 billion in 2016 rose dramatically to $10.6 billion in 2017, as per a report by Forbes. Foxconn also holds the position of the largest private employer in China and one of the largest employers worldwide.