Zong Qinghou, a Chinese entrepreneur and CEO of China's leading beverage maker Hangzhou Wahaha Group [Photo/IC]

"The success of Hangzhou Wahaha Group would not have happened without China's reform and opening up policies which provided me with startup opportunities,"  said Zong Qinghou, founder and chairman of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, the leading beverage company in China.

From a sales department of a school-run business in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province to China's beverage giant, the company did not achieve success overnight.

In 1987, the Hangzhou Shangcheng District School-Run Enterprise Sales Department, predecessor of Wahaha, was founded by the 42-year-old Zong as a tide of reform and opening up swept China.

Two years later, Wahaha Nutritional Food Factory was founded to produce "Wahaha Oral Liquid for Children", a type of natural beverage product with medicinal properties.

The company's success in selling nutrition products in school shops led to its first big expansion with Hangzhou government support. The company acquired a large, 30-year-old State-owned enterprise, the Hangzhou Canned Food Product Co in 1991 before changing its name to the Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co.

Ever since then, Wahaha has been on a path to success by leveraging its product, capital and market advantages.

A worker checks bottles of Wahaha purified water on the assembly line at a factory in Yichang city, Central China's Hubei province. [Photo/IC]