Chinese mobile social ecommerce platform Pinduoduo said on Wednesday that it had landed USD 110 million in Series B financing.
Investors in this financing round included Tencent, Banyan Capital and New Horizon. Pinduoduo said this financing would be its “strategic reserves” for future use.
The app came online in September 2015. It provides 300,000 products at discounted prices, including food, cosmetics, and mother and baby products.
After finding the products they want in the app, users can either join an existing group in WeChat, China’s largest social network, or build a new group and invite their WeChat friends to join. The users then buy the product together with a group discount.
In other words, Pinduoduo combines the concept of apps like Groupon, with the framework and popularity of WeChat.
This new mobile “shopping mall” – or perhaps the low prices of its products – has attracted 10 million users as of January, when its single-day transaction volume surpassed RMB 10 million (USD 1.5 million).
The products in the app are provided by merchants including Blackmores, Kao (a Japanese cosmetics company) and a number of Chinese overseas online shopping websites.
According to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center in June, the online shopping users reached 413 million in China in 2015, 340 million among which were mobile users. China’s online retail transactions reached RMB 3.9 trillion in 2015.
Pinduoduo said it would continue promoting its user experience as well as its brand.
(Top photo from 36kr.com)
