17. Pinduoduo: From Zero to $23B in Three Years

In this episode of TechBuzz China, co-hosts Ying-Ying Lu and Rui Ma tell the story of Pinduoduo. Starting with the company’s founding in 2015, they trace the growth of the fastest app in the history of Chinese internet to list on a major exchange. What does the company’s IPO prospectus reveal about the intentions and vision of its founder, Colin Huang? In what ways is the app a combination of “Costco and Disneyland”-- or not? The episode concludes by revisiting the insights of Mark Pols, currently Corporate Development at Facebook and previosusly an investor with GGV Capital, whose comments were originally played in Episode 2, in which Pinduoduo was briefly covered. Few in the West realize that Pinduoduo started as two parallel entities: Pinduoduo, which was a marketplace, and Pinhaohuo, which sold fruit and other perishable items via direct sales. The former was intended to be a side project created with the purposes of testing which items would be best for group-buying, but ended up generating 99.8% of the company’s revenues by 2017. Indeed, in the last twelve months, Pinduoduo has sold $41.8 billion worth of goods across 7.5 billion orders, with 344 million active buyers-- more users than JD’s 302 million, but behind Alibaba’s 552 million. However, how valuable are these juxtapositions, given that Pinduoduo is but a “3-year-old child” in comparison? Listen to the newest episode of TechBuzz China and learn about what Pinduoduo actually does, how it works, and how it’s gained success. Decide for yourself: how will the backlash and lawsuits around counterfeit goods affect Pinduoduo’s long-term success? Just how sticky and sustainable are the app’s viral user acquisition efforts? And more importantly, what can the rest of the world learn from this incredible domestic growth story? As always, you can find these stories and more at pandaily.com. Let us know what you think of the show by leaving us an iTunes review, like our Facebook page, and don't forget to tweet at us at @techbuzzchina to win some swag!