Pinduoduo collects US$1.1 billion in private funding

Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo has successfully raised US$1.1 billion in a private funding round.

The firm will use the new funding, some of which was contributed by long-standing investors, to capture “additional opportunities” during a period when the world’s economy is affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Investors in this funding round were granted 2.8 percent of ordinary shares in the firm.

The Shanghai-based business, which is a local competitor to Alibaba, saw poor fourth-quarter revenues following the impact of Covid-19, with a loss of US$250 million.

“Pinduoduo surpassed RMB1 trillion [$140.9 billion] in annual gross merchandise value (GMV) in less than five years,” said Pinduoduo VP of strategy David Liu, “and we are confident that we will see robust growth beyond our current 585 million user base.

“The extra funding gives us the strategic flexibility to capture opportunities to further benefit our users, as we bring interactive experiences, such as our new live-streaming features, and wider variety of value-for-money products to them.”