After everyone enjoyed the exciting Victoria's Secret show that got the blood pumping, Mavi also invited some of the hottest singers in America, like Britney Spears, to perform their hearts out for everyone. Even a superstar like Mariah Carey sang two songs on stage, showcasing her famous dolphin voice. This made the whole annual meeting much more lively and varied, not just relying on splashing cash like last year.
Now, when it came to the lottery drawing, that was incredibly exciting! For this year's meeting, they drew all 60 winners for the 5th, 4th, and 3rd prizes at once – talk about going from heaven to hell in a split second!
The employees who felt like they were in heaven were obviously the ones whose numbers were called. And the poor folks who felt like they were in hell were those who missed winning by just one number, or even just the difference between 69 and 96. It was really agonizing to watch!
Sitting in the audience, Mavi was taking in the group's big event. Some of his partners even specifically asked him, "Chairman Mavi, you're spending so generously... do you have some big plans for this year?" Mr. Ma from Tencent was among them.
Anyone who knows Mavi knows he doesn't just throw money around without a good reason. Daring to spend like this at the annual meeting definitely meant he had something up his sleeve. Mavi just smiled when he heard that. He was glad his partners weren't like those silly villains in novels who constantly try to stir up trouble. Otherwise, being the group chairman would be exhausting.
"Guess you could say there are plans," Mavi replied, keeping it a bit mysterious. "You'll find out when the time's right." He added that his Bugatti company was set to launch the brand new Bugatti Veyron series this year, and he believed its sky-high price tag would totally change how people all over the world thought about sports cars.
Smartphones are also coming! They'll be officially launched in the second half of this year. When each phone is assembled, Mavi plans to have engineers pre-install his group's apps: the Ma V video app (for China), the Taobao app, the Alipay platform, the Battle.net platform (which will include mobile games later), and simple games. This way, he'll integrate all his businesses through the smartphone.
Of course, the most important type of software has to be WeChat, the chat app that everyone uses.
This is Mavi's ultimate trump card. Even though he invested in Tencent, that doesn't mean he can't create WeChat himself. He believes that when it launches, new and cool features like WeChat red envelopes, Moments, and 'People Nearby' will absolutely drive people in China wild. I remember when WeChat first came out, it was even nicknamed the "hookup tool"...
"Excuse me for a moment, I need to head up to the stage," Mavi said, setting down his glass. He went back to the front. At the beginning, he had only announced the prizes up to the third tier. The second and first prizes hadn't been revealed yet, which had the employees in the audience on the edge of their seats.
The female host smiled and asked Mavi, "Chairman Mavi, those prizes you just announced really got everyone in the audience incredibly excited! Now everyone is dying to know what the second and first prizes for the annual meeting are!"
"To save everyone from waiting too long," Mavi announced loudly, "I'll announce the prizes for the second tier, first tier, and the special grand prize all at once right now. The second prize is a Lamborghini Aventador sports car worth 1.2 million US dollars, plus 1 million US dollars in gold bars. We'll be giving out a total of 5 of these."
"As for the first prize," he continued, "it's a luxury sea-view villa in Sochi valued at 5 million US dollars. We're giving out a total of 2 of those. And the special grand prize... well, that includes everything from the first through fifth tier prizes! That means paid global travel, two red envelopes worth 880,000 US dollars each, plus a handmade royal mattress, the Lamborghini sports car, the million dollars in gold bars, and the 5 million dollar luxury villa in Sochi!"
As soon as Mavi finished speaking, the more than 7500 employees in the audience immediately erupted in a huge uproar!
"Holy cow! That grand prize is incredible! Winning that means winning everything – now that's a real grand prize!"
"I want the first and second prizes too! It'd be even better if I won the grand prize, but there's only one slot... I wonder who'll be that lucky!"
"Our big boss is trying to bury us in money! The total value of all these prizes has to be over 120 million US dollars, right?! That's absolutely insane!"
...
Just as the employees figured, Mavi spent roughly 200 million US dollars on this annual meeting. 115 million of that was for the prizes, 50 million US dollars was donated to Russian charity foundations under the group's name, and the rest went towards things like venue decoration, inviting celebrities, and hotel arrangements.
Mavi isn't a stingy guy at all. His success today, besides the foresight he has as someone who's "reborn," is inseparable from the employees who work so hard for him. So, it's absolutely necessary for him to take 100 million dollars from the hundreds of billions he earned last year and use it to reward his employees (just two companies going public raised hundreds of billions, not to mention market value growth and other profits). Plus, several of his group's companies will easily become 'unicorn' companies worth hundreds of billions, or even trillions, in market value. Spending 150 million US dollars on an annual meeting is truly just a drop in the ocean...
Watching the thousands of excited employees, Mr. Ma from Alibaba Group, Mr. Ma from Tencent, and the others sitting in the VIP section were truly blown away by Mavi's boldness.
150 million US dollars... that's like 1.25 billion RMB! Add in the 50 million donation... it just left Mr. Ma and Mr. Ma wondering exactly how rich Mavi was.
Only the four heads of state-owned giants like PetroChina, Sinopec, China Mobile, and China Unicom, who were sitting nearby, really understood that given Mavi's net worth, coming up with that amount wasn't a big deal for him. But for other bosses, that 200 million US dollars? Even if it cost them their very lives, they probably couldn't scrape it together...
...
After the spectacular annual meeting wrapped up, the 7500 employees from Ma V Group also checked into hotels nearby. The colleagues who won prizes were super generous and treated everyone to a night out at bars or KTVs to celebrate.
For them, the annual meeting felt like a dream – it was just that incredible.
Since a lot of companies around the world choose to hold their annual meetings at the beginning of the year, there's always some comparison happening around this time. Last year, Mavi's group really blew up online, and some netizens even specifically compared the annual meetings of different companies. This year, some internet company bosses, not wanting to be shown up, pulled out all the stops too – splashing cash and bringing in outside help, all to make their annual meetings as impressive as possible.
However, once the Ma V Group employees uploaded the list of annual meeting prizes and the performance lineup online, Boss Mavi's incredibly extravagant move of spending 150 million US dollars once again became the talk of the internet, drawing amazement and envy from netizens.