After Xiaomi made the Fortune Global 500 list, it has decided to issue 1,000 shares to each of more than 20,500 employees and third-party service providers, according to an internal letter that was shared with KrASIA on Tuesday.
Known chiefly for its affordable smartphones, Xiaomi pulled in USD 264.8 billion in revenue in 2018, and maintained nearly 16,700 employees last year. It is ranked 468th among the Fortune Global 500 companies and is one of the seven firms that are in the internet services and retail industry.
The other six companies in the same industry are Amazon (13th), Alphabet (37th), JD.com (139th), Alibaba (182th), Facebook (184th), and Tencent (237th), according to Fortune.
It took nine years for Xiaomi to grow from a startup with 13 employees to its current state, said the company’s founder Lei Jun. He added that this makes Xiaomi the youngest company to join Fortune‘s list, aside from firms that were created via mergers.
On Tuesday morning, Xiaomi’s share price ticked upward by 1.68% to reach HKD 9.10 (USD 1.16) at 10:37 a.m., a little more than one hour after the market opened in Hong Kong.