Chinese e-commerce player Pinduoduo files for US$1 billion US initial public offering

A Chinese e-commerce site called Pinduoduo, or PDD, is preparing to raise a minimum of US$ 1 billion in an US preliminary public offering, as it defends market share versus giants consisting of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.The Shanghai-based firm saw profits more than triple to $278 million in 2017, according to its filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, under the name Walnut Street Group Holding Limited. Losses increased 55 per cent to $79.5 million while deal volumes reached 141.2 billion yuan.PDD has actually ended up being

one of the fastest-growing start-ups in China by developing a sort of Facebook-Groupon mash-up, where individuals area deals on items such as fruit, clothing or toilet tissue, then hire friends to purchase at a discount. It uses product at up to 20 percent cheaper than market rate by letting customers purchase straight from makers, cutting out intermediaries, advertising and acquisition costs.The company was

established by ex-Google engineer Colin Huang and counts Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Sequoia Capital China as backers.Pinduoduo saw its evaluation dive about 10 times in its previous round of fundraising in April. It raised more than$1 billion, at an assessment of about $15 billion, people familiar said at the time.Besides its credibility for low prices, PDD has benefited

from a large base of users in lower-tier cities. The concept behind PDD is to give people a various experience than at conventional e-commerce sites like Amazon.com or Alibaba, where shoppers have the tendency to plug in a keyword and then select an item after sorting through a couple of options.Pinduoduo’s everyday active users went beyond that of JD.com in January and reached 55.9 million in June, inning accordance with research from Shenzhen-based expert Jiguang. Alibaba’s Taobao app had 172 million daily active users and JD 34.3 million, it said.Huang released his profession in Silicon Valley and after that returned home to end up being a serial business owner. His app is supposed to be more like a digital variation of shopping at the shopping mall with buddies, where you can share ideas and get feedback from people you trust.