Recently, employees of Tencent Holdings , China’s tech conglomerate waited eagerly to receive the red packet from chairman Pony Ma and other senior staff. A red packet is usually a monetary gift that is given in Chinese and South Asian societies on festive occasions. This year saw an enthusiastic long queue of employees waiting to not only receive red packets from Pony Ma but also interact with him.
As a tradition, Ma personally hands out the red packets to his employees during the Lunar New year. The line was big enough as it touched the 48th floor of the building in the new headquarters of Tencent at Shenzhen in Nanshan district. According to one Tencent employee, he waited for three hours and received 200 yuan from four senior executives. Another employee received 100 yuan from Pony Ma and 50 yuan each from three other senior executives.
There was no announcement from Tencent as regards to the number of employees who received the red packets or the amount of the money spent. The co-founder of Wechat assigned a team member with the task of making the red packet tradition more effective. This led to the introduction of Wechat Red packet, a way to send money across digital channels. Wechat red packet became instantly popular and saw users link their bank accounts with their Wechat mobile wallet. A Tencent employee reported that he received a sum of 400 yuan in his WeChat account without queuing up.
Leave a Reply