Pinduoduo Inc. (Chinese: 拼多多; Pinyin: Pīn duōduō) is a Chinese online retailer with a focus on the traditional agriculture industry.[2][3][4][5]
Native name | 拼多多 |
---|---|
Company type | Public |
| |
Industry | |
Founded | 2015 |
Founder | Colin Huang Zheng |
Headquarters | , China |
Key people | Lei Chen[1] |
Products | |
Parent | PDD Holdings |
Website | www |
Pinduoduo generated RMB 2.44 trillion (US$383 billion) gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2021.[6][7] The business is the largest product of PDD Holdings, which also owns the U.S. based online market place Temu.[8][9]
Pinduoduo was founded in 2015 by Chinese businessman and software engineer Colin Huang.[10]
On 7 June 2018, Legal Evening News reported that Pinduoduo investigated and shut down stores and removed listings that violated its platform policy against pornography and violence, following an earlier report by the newspaper.[11]
On 20 January 2019, Pinduoduo reported to the police theft by hackers that exploited a loophole in their system and stole tens of millions of Yuan worth of vouchers.[12]
During the initial COVID-19 lockdown in China in 2020, Pinduoduo started a program to assist rural Chinese farmers with selling their produce to customers online instead of relying on traditional in-person marketplaces.[13] In August 2020, Pinduoduo launched Duo Duo Maicai, a service which enables consumers to preorder groceries for pickup at designated locations.[14]
On 5 July 2022, a Shanghai court dismissed a local resident's lawsuit accusing Pinduoduo of cheating in a promotional event.[15]
In September 2022, Pinduoduo's sister's company, Temu, was launched in the U.S. by PDD Holdings.[16][17][18] In 2023, PDD Holdings changed its legal domicile from Shanghai to Dublin.[19]
In 2018, Pinduoduo came under scrutiny following a spate of negative press calling the company out for inferior and imitation of products.[20] The company responded with an open letter stating that it had, in a single week in August, shut down 1,128 stores, taken down more than 4 million listings, and blocked 450,000 suspected counterfeit goods listings from being published.[21] The company also disclosed that it had removed 500,715 items and closed more than 40 stores as of February 4, 2020, to protect consumers from counterfeit and substandard masks being sold by merchants hoping to profit amid the COVID-19 pandemic.[22]
In April 2019, Pinduoduo was first named in the Office of the United States Trade Representative's list of Notorious Markets for Counterfeit Products and Piracy.[23][24][25] As of 2023[update], Pinduoduo remains listed as a notorious market.[26]
In 2023, Google removed Pinduoduo's app from the Play Store after a Chinese cybersecurity firm found malware in app versions carried in Chinese app stores.[27][28][29] Two days after releasing an update to address concerns, Pinduoduo disbanded the team of engineers and product managers who had developed the exploits. A majority of the team was transferred to Temu, working in various departments.[29]
Six cybersecurity teams interviewed by CNN – including Finnish, Russian, US, and Israeli firms – as well as Chinese cybersecurity firm DarkNavy, all labeled Pinduoduo as malware or potential malware.[29] In a report by Bloomberg News, a researcher from Kaspersky Labs stated the following: "Some versions of the Pinduoduo app contained malicious code, which exploited known Android vulnerabilities to escalate privileges, download and execute additional malicious modules, some of which also gained access to users' notifications and files".[30]
In 2024, the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Pinduoduo uses surveillance and non-compete lawsuits against former employees who leave to work for rivals.[31][32]