Colin Huang, a Chinese entrepreneur, started his career in Silicon valley as an engineer at Google, he worked on early search algorithms for e-commerce and returned back home to start his own company. He is already on his fourth and most progressive startup Pinduoduo.
Pinduoduo or simply PDD is like a combination of Facebook and Groupon, he believes that PDD could transform the e-commerce industry. In less than two years, the company raised $100 million valuing it to more than $1.5 billion (10 billion yuan.)
The idea behind PDD is to change the online shopping experience of the customer, something similar like having fun with friends at a mall and shopping. You are open to sharing your ideas, take suggestions from friends and then if you buy a product, you get a discount. PDD is now one of the largest E-commerce companies in China.
Mr.Huang told Bloomberg, “Many companies tried this before, but no one has done it in real. We feel that we have a competitive advantage. ”
In 2007, he started his first e-commerce site called ‘Ouku.com’ to sell consumer electronics and mobile phones. Revenues suddenly moved upward, but he realized ‘Ouku.com’ was similar to other e-commerce sites and sold it in 2010. He then started a company called Leqi, which helps companies to market their services on websites like Alibaba, Taobao or JD.com. The second company of Mr.Huang is a gaming company which offers role playing games on WeChat. He became free from both the companies. Due to health problems, he retired when he was just 33.
Eventually, Mr.Huang came forward with the idea of PDD, combining both e-commerce and gaming sectors, by bringing together Alibaba and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Huang and his team convinced both the companies that there are a numerous number of opportunities with this combination.
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In May 2015, he raised an amount of $8 million from an investor group led by Banyan and launched the application a few months later. The application gives a different shopping experience to the customer, most of the people use PDD on WeChat. You get the discount when your friend join the shopping, as you are already in WeChat, it is easy to get other friends to join you. With the increasing popularity and usage of PDD, it raised about $100 million in 2016. PDD made a rich retailer experience to both merchants and shoppers. It also helps merchants to manage a small group of shoppers and get direct feedback from the customers.
Mr. Huang is aiming to skies, he is improbable to spend his rest of life in PDD. His role models are The founding father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and Benjamin Franklin.
Mr.Colin Huang says “As the sun sets over Shanghai, that is a genuine life.”
