In 1987, the sales department of school-run business of Shangcheng District of Hangzhou, the predecessor of Wahaha, was set up. Mr. Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha, together with other two retired teachers started business from selling frozen sucker with a loan of ￥140 thousand. In 1989, Wahaha Nutritional Food Factory was founded to produce "Wahaha Oral Liquid for Children", a kind of natural food combined with medicine effect. After its birth, Wahaha won initial success, and its advertisement of "drinking Wahaha to have good appetite" became well known to the nation. In 1991, just 3 years of the foundation of Wahaha, the company's sales revenue beyond 100 million! Such a miracle happened in a school-run business began to attract the attention of the society.

In 1991, with the support of the Hangzhou government, Wahaha Nutritional Food Factory, which had only 100 employees but a deposit of ￥60 million, merged with Hangzhou Canning Food Factory by the price of ￥80 million. At this time, the latter had more than 2000 employees with a plant area of 60 thousand of square meters, but its total assets were less than its debts.
Hangzhou Wahaha Group Corporation was formed. Ever since then, Wahaha has stepped on the road of scale operation.

In 1994, Wahaha merged with 3 companies in Fulin to support the construction of the Three Gorges area. And Wahaha Fulin company realized high-speed development . It is now the biggest corporation of that district and one of the "50 Leading Corporations" of Chongqing.
Since 1997, Wahaha has made persistent efforts to set up new subsidiary companies, such as in Hong'an, Changsha, Guangyuan, Jingyu, Gaobeidian, Chaohu and Qujiang, etc. All of them has made good profit and become important local taxpayers.
Such support and achievement has been highly valued by the Party and the State Department. The nation's leaders, such as Mr. Jiang Zhemin, Li Peng, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao and Zhou Jiahua visited Wahaha's sites for times.

In 1996, the company made joint ventures with Danone Group to form 5 new subsidiaries, which fetched in $ 45 million at first and then $ 26.2 million as added investment. Wahaha brought world-class advanced production lines from Germany, America, Italy, Japan and Canada into its sites. By using foreign investment and technology, Wahaha strides toward a new century of national brand.

In 2000, the company produced 2.24 million tons of beverage with a sales revenue of ￥5.4 billion, ￥1.27 billion of profit and tax and ￥0.96 billion of profit. The production accounted for 15% of the nation's output of beverage and 37% of the "Big Ten" of beverage industry. The output of the main products, such as bottled water, fruit milk, AD milk enriched with Ca, and mixed congee has been in the first place of the Chinese beverage industry for years, among which the output of milk product and bottled water can compete with other international big corporations. The group has become the biggest company in the beverage industry of China with total assets of ￥4.4 billion and more than 40 subsidiaries cover more than 16 provinces.
Of course, behind such outstanding achievement are the competitive power and good challenging circumstance formed by many years of hard working.