NEW DELHI, Dec 31: China's billionaire Zhong Shanshan, 66, has displaced India's Mukesh Ambani to become Asia's richest man. He has also sidelined other top Chinese big names like Jack Ma.

His net worth has surged from $70.9 billion to $77.8 billion in 2020. He is also the 11th richest man on earth, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He had a meteoric rise as he was earlier an unknown entity.

Shanshan is the owner of the Chinese vaccine maker and pharma giant Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Co. and the founder of Nongfu Spring Co., the largest beverage company in China, selling mostly bottled water.

He is known as the 'Lone Wolf' as he is not involved in politics nor is he linked to any other business tycoons. A dropout from the school, he had in the beginning worked as a construction worker, a mushroom farmer, a newspaper reporter, a drugmaker and a beverage sales agent.

In 2020 Wantai Biological Pharmacy was made public and Nongfu Spring was listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The shares soared. Wantai is also developing a covid vaccine.

Once the world's fourth richest person, Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman and Managing Director, too had made several deals in 2020 totalling Rs 1,90,438 crore, focussing on technology and ecommerce - Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail - despite the adverse situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. He is now at the 12th spot in the global index. His networth came down to $76.9 billion.

The networth of China's previous richest Jack Ma, Asia's richest person before Ambani, also came down from $61.7 billion to $51.2 billion.