Thrifty businesswoman finds balance between home and career

When Gong Haiyan showed up in the interviewee room, I found it hard to associate her with a Nasdaq-listed Chinese company because she was inexpensively dressed and wasn't wearing any makeup. She looked more like a young neighborhood mother than an ambitious entrepreneur who has already achieved something significant in her first career.

But the first questions she asked me soon connected her with Jiayuan.com, an online dating website she founded in 2003 that has evolved to become China's largest online matchmaking platform.

"Are you married?" she asked. When I said I wasn't, she wanted to know whether I had a boyfriend.

The fundamental motivation behind her establishing Jiayuan.com came from her own desire to find a husband when she was studying as a postgraduate student at Fudan University in Shanghai.

This first business venture has not only brought her a good husband but also enabled her rise to fame in the commercial world along with the rapid growth of Jiayuan.com. The website went public on the Nasdaq in 2011.

There is no doubt there are a lot of hurdles on the journey toward launching a business but Gong speaks of these difficulties in a calm and objective tone, not trying to exaggerate how hard they are nor how capable she proved to be at overcoming them.

I think it was the way she was brought up and her early experience being self-employed that has made her a down-to-earth person possessing great drive.

Born to an impoverished rural family in South China's Hunan province, she soon learned about the challenge of raising children.

Even today she still lives her life in a thrifty fashion. Unlike most women, she shops for clothes only twice every year, not online but in brick-and-mortar stores, in summer and winter respectively.

Although she now has a bachelor's degree in Chinese literature from Peking University and a master's degree in journalism from Fudan University, Gong spent three years out of school before she was admitted to the first of those respected educational establishments.

She's a woman with a clear life plan and great determination to execute it.

"At the very beginning, I already had my life planned: I would retire around the age of 46 and then spend the rest of my time with my family," said Gong, now 37.

The businesswoman has a 4-year-old girl. Her husband quit his job as a neuroscience researcher at Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a few years ago to support her career.

Despite being an ambition-driven entrepreneur, she also maintains a well-organized family life, with all members showing great support for her career.

But when asked about her advice for young female entrepreneurs who want to keep a balanced life between career and family, she said family should always come first and she is against sacrificing personal life for career success.

"In this way, I think I'm really very lucky," said Gong.

Every day in the morning, she spends about one hour on the running machine at home before going to work, because she thinks it helps to keep healthy.

Her business icon is Elon Musk, chief executive officer and co-founder of Tesla Motors Inc, the US electric carmaker, because of his success in several different sectors he has invested in.