Nio, the Chinese EV automaker founded in 2014, was "Born rich."

The company's founder William Li or Li Bin, is a veteran entrepreneur who previously founded Bitauto (易车) - a leading provider of internet content and marketing services for China's fast-growing automotive industry. William Li is reportedly charismatic and resourceful, one of the major reasons why Nio won so many star investors' hearts and capital from the very beginning.

The Stellar Rise of a Small Startup

According to Investopedia's report, the top institutional stakeholders of Nio include Tencent (which owns 12.7%), Baillie Gifford (holding 8.4%), BlackRock (owning 4.8%), and Vanguard (holding 3.1%), all known for their deep pockets and prestigious reputations.

And the list goes on. It's reported that stellar investors such as Xiaomi, IDG, Lenovo, and Temasek are also involved in initial investments.

Undaunted by the challenge of transforming the oil-fueled auto industry, Li poured all the money raised into Nio and turned it from a small startup into a global company with world-class R&D, design, manufacturing centers, and user service centers in Shanghai, Beijing, San Jose, Munich, and London, and more than 4000 employees from nearly 40 countries.

In late 2018, Li took a bold move. Nio went public on the New York Stock Exchange and raised $1 billion from IPO. Over the past seven years, Nio has become China's top EV brand in popularity and delivery.

Dark and Shiny Moments of The Journey

However, Nio didn't achieve this without setbacks on the journey.

A major hit came in late 2019. The carmaker was on the verge of bankruptcy for cash shortage, executive departures, and vehicle recalls for battery faults. The situation was compounded by shares plunging from its IPO's $6.26 to less than $2 in 2019.

"It was our darkest time," Li said in a TV program of the Chinese state media CCTV. He had never anticipated the automobile industry to be so capital-intensive before. Billions were poured into electric-vehicle companies, but much more will be needed before the auto industry changes.

By adopting a win-win strategy, the automaker signed a framework agreement with Hefei, the capital of China's Anhui Province, which invested Nio more than 7 billion yuan. In return, Nio committed to building factories and research centers in the city, which would help boost the local GDP.

Looking back, it's clear that Li and Nio survived.

With dazzling and dark moments mixed, Li, dubbed the Elon Musk of China, is hailed as a success after navigating the cash shortage crisis at home and abroad.

According to Nio's data, the company's deliveries have been doubling every year since 2019. In 2021, Nio delivered 91,429 vehicles, ranking 2nd among all the major Chinese EV brands. And the shares of the rising firm once surged to around $60 as Nio increased deliveries at a record pace, only to fall back recently amid a broader selloff of EV-related stocks triggered by the chip shortage. The current share price of Nio is at around$21, more than three times the IPO's $6.26.

In the “Nio Day 2021”, the company's annual event for new product launch, the company outlined its global ambitions to the public as follows:

Nio will expand its global footprint to more than 25 foreign countries and construct more than 4000 battery swap stations overseas. The company eventually wants to bring Nio's products and services to the U.S, where its most prominent rival Tesla dominates the local EV market.

Li's fortunes soared as the company's shares became highly sought-after. In June 2021, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated Li's net worth to be $7.11 billion. Not to mention that Li co-founded and invested in over 40 companies in the internet and automotive industries.

Li's Past and Philosophy Behind Success

Putting Li's glamorous present aside, how did Li's past fuel the rise of Nio? What's his philosophy of building a global business?

To many people's surprise, Li comes from a humble background. Accoring to Chinese media reports, he was born into a rural family in Anqing, an economically backward city of Anhui Province, where he lived in the mountains herding cattle as a child. Like other entrepreneurs with such backgrounds, he studied hard when he was young. The rest of the story is like the old saying, "Knowledge Reshapes Destiny." He later earned a spot at the prestigious Peking University, where he majored in sociology and minored in law and computer science. After graduation, he became a serial entrepreneur. One of his major accomplishments before Nio was Bitauto (易车) - a leading web content & services provider for the auto industry, which put him in contact with tech moguls like Tencent's Pony Ma (马化腾).

The second secret for Nio's success relies on creating a sense of allegiance among buyers. The company's user services revolve around a community-based strategy.

Let's start with Nio House. Nio House is the company's concept showroom that is designed with a library and coffee shop for browsing customers. Providing a great consumer experience unlike any other traditional dealerships in China it's also the first step to fostering close ties with buyers.

Second, the company builds brand loyalty with a lifestyle APP where various Nio-branded goods can be purchased, such as mugs, T-shirts, and hoodies. And both cash or credits earned from signing up to posting articles are acceptable. Customers can use the APP for everything from sharing their experiences driving a Nio to organizing offline get-togethers. Li and executives often personally interact with users and attend their small get-togethers.

As a result, the growing Nio community keeps driving the brand’s growth in China.

The Future of The Auto Industry

However, the competition is getting fierce. As Covid-19 continues to disrupt the global supply chain, Nio is struggling to meet its production target because of the chip shortage. And more brands have sensed the huge potential of the global EV market. Both traditional automaker and internet companies are upping the ante, including China's top smartphone maker Xiaomi, the World-leading technology corporation Huawei, the most formidable tech giant Apple.

The good news is that since China announced its climate pledge to achieve a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, more vigorous policies and measures had been put in place to facilitate the auto industry's transformation.

In 2021, the annual sales volume of Electric Vehicles in China exceeded 3.5 million units, increasing the EV share of the auto market to 13.4%. But according to "China's action plan to achieve carbon peak before 2030", the proportion of new and clean energy-powered vehicles will reach about 40% by 2030. Like Li once said, "Electric vehicles still account for a small share of the entire auto market, and there is a huge room for growth worldwide."

China's EV sales currently account for about 53% of the global EV market. With the support from the Chinese government, there is no doubt that Nio will remain one of the major forces in the EV market despite its recent hiccups in deliveries, and other EV brands like Xpeng (小鹏) and Li Auto (理想) will continue to expand overseas.