Tao Huabi

Tao Huabi (born January 1947) is a Chinese billionaire entrepreneur, best known as the founder of the chili sauce brand Lao Gan Ma ("Old Godmother").

Tao is a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a National People's Congress deputy.

Tao was born in a poverty-stricken village in Meitan County, Guizhou, in January 1947.

She was the eighth girl in the family and wasn't taught how to read or write.

During the Great Chinese Famine, she dug for wild vegetables and tried various ways to eat plant roots using whatever she had to try to make the little food her family had taste better.

At the age of 20, Tao married an accountant in a local geological team and gave birth to two sons: Li Guishan (李贵山) and Li Hui (李辉).

Not long after, her husband became sick and she had to earn money to cover for her husband's medical costs and support her two sons.

She went to Guangzhou to find a factory job as a migrant worker but after her husband died, returned to Guizhou to care for her children.

She began to sell rice curd and vegetables in a street stall.

In 1989, Tao opened up her own restaurant in Guiyang, Guizhou where she sold simple noodles with spicy hot sauce with soybeans.

She became known as a "godmother" to poor students as she would always give them discounts and some extra food.

Her restaurant began to gain popularity, particularly for its sauce.

Customers would come to purchase the sauce by itself and Tao took notice.

In the early 1990s, more truck drivers passed by Tao's shop due to the construction of a new highway nearby; she started giving out her sauces for free for the truckers to take home, marketing her sauce by word of mouth.

By late 1994, she stopped selling noodles and turned her restaurant into a specialty store to sell her sauces, primarily her chili oil sauce.

In 1994, she borrowed two houses of the Yunguan Village Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Nanming District, recruited forty workers, and started her own sauce factory.

By 1997, the company was officially listed and open for business.

Though the brand was successful almost immediately after launching, it struggled to deal with competing brands with similar packaging.

In 2001, the high court in Beijing finally ruled that other similar products could not use the "Lao Gan Ma" name nor imitate its packaging.

Tao received 400,000 RMB (60,000 USD) in compensation.

Tao is also a member of the CCP and is politically active as a representative of the standing Committee of the Guizhou Provincial People's Congress.

According to Chinese media, Tao has reportedly retired in 2014, with her and her youngest son Li Hui no longer being on the list of Lao Gan Ma shareholders.

Her oldest son Li Guishan, however, is still a company shareholder.

In 2015, Forbes China estimated her net worth at $1.05 billion.