How do you say Pinduoduo?

It’s pronounced “Pin Dwor Dwor.” In Chinese, “pin” means combine, while “duo” means more. The name Pinduoduo means “Together, More Savings, More Fun.” 

What is Pinduoduo?

Launched in 2015, Pinduoduo has been now a leading social e-commerce, mainly Group buying, application and one of the fastest growing platforms in China.

Early Beginnings?

Pinduoduo was Founded by Colin Huang in 2015, infact Pinduoduo was his 3rd company

Colin was a engineer at Google before he became an entrepreneur, his first company was an eCommerce mobile selling platform called Ouku and his second was a gaming company called Xunmeng 

Colin initially started Pinhaohuo (PHH), a Fruit selling farmer to consumer model, all happening in the WeChat and gained traction of nearly 100k orders per day by Sept 2015

Watch: 

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwWBbTy79vU[/embedyt]

In Early 2016, with the impressive growth, Colin decided to combine PHH with one of this other gaming company and that’s how Pinduoduo was born

Group buying or Team buying was one of the features which were being tested by the teams at Pinduoduo and apparently become the core business offering as it stands today 

How Does Pinduoduo Attract Millions of Users?

When Pinduoduo was starting out, there was a shift in the Chinese e-commerce landscape. Previous group buying platforms simply sold discount coupons. It wasn’t a real group-buying action. Pingduoduo has shifted group buying into another new era.

How do they do it?

The core of the Pinduoduo experience is the concept of team purchase, where buyers form a group in order to receive discounts from suppliers

A team needs to be formed within 24 hours to have the order approved. Once that’s done, the purchase is confirmed and the product is shipped within 48 hours.

It utilizes the social networking to connect like-minded shoppers and various gamification to draw so many users gradually addicted to the platform.

Pinduoduo is built around making online shopping totally fun, and one of the ways they do this is by gamification of the platform

Daily Check in : The Daily Check-in mechanism is to encourage users open the apps everyday with the redeemable points reward which can be deducted in their item purchasing.

Price Chop : The Price Chop mechanism encourage users to get the items that they want for free by sharing with their networking within 24h.

Member Card : Member Card are different kinds of the rewarding, aiming to help users save money via vouchers or special discount by sharing amongst their friends.

Mini Game : The Mini game is an in-app games to allow users enjoy playing the online game beyond purchasing.

How big is Pinduoduo today?

Pinduoduo reached the $5b revenue within 5years, overtaking all the major multibillion dollar companies in the world!!!

The number of Pinduoduo’s annual active buyers in 2020 reached 788 million, surpassing Alibaba’s 779 million annual active users.

Pinduoduo’s full-year revenues in 2020 were RMB 59.50 billion ($ 9.12 billion), representing an increase of 97% YoY.

Pinduoduo’s market value now stands at over $190 billion.

Key takeaways from Pinduoduo Success Case

Consumers are attracted by the extreme savings on a wide range of goods

Users have to form “teams” to unlock discounts

Group buying allows many consumer demands to be matched and met by suppliers.

Target people living in small cities and rural areas who were becoming more familier with online commerce. These consumers are price sensitive and less brand conscious.

Further incentivizes social sharing and bulk purchases by rewarding loyal users with free products, cash or other perks creates viral effects that drive up purchasing activity.

Partnered with WeChat and gained access to its huge data base (1.2 Billion users).

Unique C2M model which bridges the gap by connecting producers directly with the consumers, without relying on layers of intermediaries in the traditional supply chain.

Sources:

https://ecommercetochina.com/the-fastest-growing-platform-in-china-pinduoduo/

https://turner.substack.com/p/pinduoduo-and-vertically-integrated?s=r

https://www.ycombinator.com/library/2z-pinduoduo-and-the-rise-of-social-e-commerce