Ma Liqian, the wife of Sea co-founder and billionaire Forrest Li, is buying a S$42.5 million mansion at Gallop Road, reported Bloomberg on Apr. 22.

The good class bungalow (GCB) sits on a 1,552 sq m plot of land and is adjacent to a 1,403 sq m bungalow that Li bought in 2018.

Li paid S$26 million for the bungalow.

It has since been redeveloped into a two-storey detached house with a swimming pool, according to The Business Times.

Both plots are located on prime real estate near the Botanic Gardens.

Who's who

Both Ma and Li are Singapore citizens.

Li is the chairman and CEO of internet company Sea, whose subsidiaries include Shopee.

He was Singapore's richest person in 2021, with a current net worth of S$3.8 billion.

In a speech at the November 2020 Singapore Business Awards, where he was named Businessman of the Year, Li recalled his beginnings in Singapore as a "nobody".

"I came here with barely any savings, and a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt. My wife and I could only rent one bedroom in a three-room HDB flat in Braddell," he said.

Ma, on the other hand, was previously an investment director at Temasek and is a visiting scholar at Stanford Engineering School.

She has since shifted her focus to building up her family office, according to her profile on Stanford University's website.

In the green

While Li's fortunes fell in the recent tech slump, it has since recovered somewhat.

This March, Sea announced its first profitable year on record, in part thanks to profits from e-commerce subsidiary Shopee.

In a Mar. 4 press release, Sea reported that its net income in 2023 was US$162.7 million (S$221 million), as compared to a loss of US$1.7 billion (S$2.32 billion) the previous year.

"Looking ahead, we expect 2024 to be another profitable year," Li said.

Top image from Google Maps and Stanford University's website