A Chinese e-commerce site called Pinduoduo (拼多多) is planning to raise at least US$1 billion in a US initial public offering (IPO), as it fights for market share against giants including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴).
The Shanghai-based firm last year saw revenue more than triple to US$278 million, according to its filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, under the name Walnut Street Group Holding Ltd (核桃街集團控股).
Losses rose 55 percent to US$79.5 million, while transaction volumes reached 141.2 billion yuan.
Photo: AP
Pinduoduo has become one of the fastest-growing start-ups in China by creating a sort of mashup between Facebook and Groupon, where people spot deals on products, such as fruit, clothes or toilet paper, and then recruit friends to buy at a discount.
It offers merchandise at up to 20 percent cheaper than market price by letting consumers buy directly from manufacturers, cutting out intermediaries, advertising and acquisition costs.
The company was founded by ex-Google engineer Colin Huang (黃崢) and counts Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) and Sequoia Capital China (紅杉中國) as backers.
Pinduoduo saw its valuation jump about 10 times in its previous round of fundraising in April.
It raised more than US$1 billion, at a valuation of about US$15 billion, people familiar said at the time.
Besides its reputation for low prices, Pinduoduo has benefited from a large base of users in lower-tier Chinese cities.
Its daily active users surpassed that of JD.com (京東) in January and reached 55.9 million in June, according to research from Shenzhen-based consultant Jiguang.
Alibaba’s Taobao (淘寶) app had 172 million daily active users and JD 34.3 million, it said.
Huang launched his career in Silicon Valley and then returned home to become a serial entrepreneur.
His app is supposed to be more like a digital version of shopping at the mall with friends, where you can share ideas and get feedback from people you trust.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San