On the 9th of December 2017, Cheetah Mobile published a ranking of e-commerce Apps in China.

For PDD to continue to grow and be as profitable as the market expects, it may need to gain more market share in China’s top-tier (richer) cities where Alibaba and JD dominate.

Introduction – Pinduoduo and its business model.

Due to its discount model, the company mainly sells cheap products to lower-income shoppers, especially in China’s third- and fourth-tier cities. Pinduoduo was found in September 2015 in Shanghai by former Google engineer Zheng Huang and is a third-party social commerce platform that focusses on connecting manufacturers, suppliers and retailers with end-consumers in the B2C market.

In this issue, we look at the business model and latest developments of Pinduoduo – a popular group-buying platform which targets consumers in the lower-tier cities and rural markets. Pinduoduo was born in the mobile Internet era, bypassing the PC era’s search-based online shopping model which placed products first. And right behind, the number #2, was Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo pinned its attraction on meshing online shopping with social media. Pinduoduo is the leading Chinese App for social e-commerce, and the fastest growing App in the history of the Chinese Internet. Taobao was number #1. Launched in 2015 by ex-Google engineer Huang Zheng, the company operates a bulk-buying business model … Customers can buy products at a cheaper price on Pinduoduo, while retailers can clear inventory on the platform. Pinduoduo has doubters. e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of products from daily groceries to home appliances Pinduoduo has quickly risen to become the third-largest e-commerce player in China ... Chun also noted that Alibaba and JD are building up relationships with factories for the C2M model of business. Despite the firm’s jab at the search-based model, interestingly enough, Pinduoduo earned 88% of its RMB 13.1 billion (USD 1.9 billion) revenue in 2018 from its “search” business, or what it calls “online marketing services.” Pinduoduo’s founder Huang Zheng once served the world’s largest search engine. And the place to find these deals is Pinduoduo. Pingduoduo is seen as a major rival to Alibaba.

“New e-commerce” no longer treats each individual merely as traffic nor does it simply take wholesale distribution of such traffic as its business model.