Founder & CEO of NetEase Inc., one of the first pioneers and mostsuccessful entrepreneurs of China’s Internet industry, and proposer of the“New Consumption” concept.

William Ding has been directing NetEase’s strategy planning and overalloperation since its inception in 1997. Under Ding’s leadership, NetEasegrew robustly and quickly became one of the largest internet companieslisted in the NASDAQ with a market value of over USD 30 Billion.

With over 20 years of experience in the Internet industry and a deepunderstanding of the market, Ding and the NetEase team created anumber of pioneering internet products including the first free email service in Chinese and the first self-developed Massively Multiplayer Online Game in China. NetEase is now one of the world’s leading game developers and publishers, the largest domestic email operator of China,and maintains a dominant position in each field it occupies, such as e-mail(e.g. 163 Mail), interactive entertainment (e.g. NetEase Game, NetEase Cloud Music), news media (e.g. NetEase News app, 163.com), premium e-commerce (e.g. NetEase Kaola, NetEase Yanxuan), online education(NetEase Youdao, NetEase Cloud Classroom, NetEase Open Courses).

In the meanwhile, with a corporate culture of steady progress and customer first, NetEase, as the only one of China’s internet companies, is ranked on the 2017 Forbes List of Top Regarded Companies.

William Ding holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Communication Engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Before establishing the Company, Ding worked as an engineer for China Telecom and a technical support engineer for Sybase in China.