On May 22nd, Pinduoduo Group released its Q1 2024 performance report as of March 31st. Thanks to the positive start of the consumer market and the accumulation of positive factors, as well as the enhanced capabilities of the "Duo Shi Hui" and "Hao Shi" platforms, Pinduoduo Group achieved a revenue of 86.8 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year increase of 131%.
In the first quarter, the platform continued to launch profit sharing activities such as the New Year's Eve and the Spring Festival without closing, and focused on the theme of "domestic product trend". It selected high-quality agricultural products and branded goods, tilted subsidy resources, enriched supply, and solidly assisted platform users in obtaining practical benefits from both consumption and supply ends.
This year is an important year for Pinduoduo Group to increase investment in deepening high-quality development. Zhao Jiazhen, Executive Director and Co CEO of Pinduoduo Group, pointed out that "in the future, the company will continue to make efforts in the consumer side, supply side, compliance, and platform ecology, while vigorously giving back to consumers and ensuring high-quality supply and services."
"High quality development cannot be achieved overnight, let alone immediate results." Chen Lei, Chairman and Co CEO of Pinduoduo Group, said that since the decision to transform, the platform has been prepared for long-term investment and continuous efforts. "We will take one step at a time, solidly improve the team's execution and platform capabilities, and continuously create greater value for platform ecosystem participants."
Firmly promoting high-quality development and increasing efforts to benefit people's livelihoods
During the period of rapid business advancement, Pinduoduo Group actively transformed into high-quality development, largely due to its insight into the trend of consumer upgrading. In the first quarter, Pinduoduo continued to improve in terms of "more affordable" and "good service". The business team not only focuses on high-quality products and high prices, but also actively innovates consumer scenarios, enriches product categories and service forms. By carrying out a series of new product launch activities, it helps to unleash consumer potential and make it easier for more people to live a better life.
At the New Year's Goods Festival launched at the beginning of the year, Pinduoduo not only tilted over 3 billion yuan of on-site resources and red envelope discounts to benefit consumers, but also collaborated with millions of high-quality merchants from thousands of landmark production areas in various provinces and cities across the country to provide consumers with high-quality products from the source, covering landmark products, "county mayor recommendations", and direct procurement of top-quality goods from all over the world.
Take Yili, a domestic dairy brand, for example. During the New Year's Day, it launched a limited product for the the Year of the Loong in combination with the New Year customs, and launched it in Pinduoduo. With the support of platform resources, the sales of this new product soon stabilized at the top of the best-selling and hot search lists in the category.
At the same time, Pinduoduo continuously optimizes platform services. In the first quarter, Xinjiang Express's free shipping service to villages has taken it to the next level. The distance between the end delivery network and consumers has been shortened to within 2 kilometers, and the delivery time has been compressed to 24 hours. Consumers in over half of the villages in Xinjiang can enjoy convenient shopping services in the free shipping area. Thanks to this, the platform's order volume in these regions has grown rapidly year-on-year, forming a positive cycle with the improvement of platform service capabilities.
In terms of global business, in response to the rapidly changing international market, in the first quarter, Duoduo Cross border launched a more flexible semi custody model. Sellers who have warehouse logistics partners in the target country can decide their own warehouse logistics solutions, thereby continuously improving their comprehensive strength and better integrating into the global market while facing overseas consumers; On the other hand, dozens of industrial belt docking activities have been carried out in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Beijing Tianjin Hebei, and Jiaodong regions, supporting more industrial belt enterprises to seize opportunities to go abroad and expand order channels through offline communication and resource allocation.
"We will continue to explore high-quality merchants and products, tailor to local conditions, provide suitable fulfillment links, improve supply chain efficiency, and provide a wide range of affordable goods to different consumers around the world." Chen Lei said that supply chain capability, compliance capability, and service capability will be the three "internal skills" that Duoduo focuses on cultivating in cross-border markets.
Strengthening technology, compliance, and ecological construction, focusing on enhancing endogenous value
Technological innovation is an important engine for achieving high-quality development. Since its establishment, the company has spared no effort in technological research and development, polishing its supply chain capabilities through technological innovation, and promoting cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the supply chain.
In the past two years, Pinduoduo Group's R&D investment has exceeded the 10 billion yuan mark. In the first quarter of this year, the company invested 2.9 billion yuan to support research and development, a year-on-year increase of 16%. Chen Lei stated that he will continue to increase investment in research and development, accumulate easy-to-use tools and services, further empower businesses, and promote industrial digital upgrading.
Agriculture is the fundamental foundation of Pinduoduo. As one of the largest agricultural product upstream platforms in the country, Pinduoduo not only optimizes the circulation chain of agricultural products, but also fully supports the development of agriculture through science and technology, actively contributing to the promotion of agricultural technology to rural areas and the transformation of scientific research achievements.
In the first quarter, Pinduoduo provided deep support for the finals of the second Science and Technology Academy Competition, which not only set up a stage for young students across the country to learn and exchange cutting-edge agricultural technologies, but also contributed to the promotion of the 3.0+version of Science and Technology Academy, attracting more attention and support for the achievements of Science and Technology Academy in understanding people's livelihoods and governing knowledge. Pinduoduo continues to tilt and support resources towards characteristic agricultural and sideline products such as oranges, pomelo, kiwifruit, and fresh flowers, which are the focus of research by the Science and Technology Academy, to help farmers increase their income and rural revitalization.
This quarter, the fourth "Duoduo Agricultural Research Technology Competition" global recruitment was officially launched. Pinduoduo, as the organizer, is leading the creation of an agricultural technology innovation competition to attract more innovative talents and enterprises to participate in agricultural technology innovation, and jointly promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional agriculture. It is understood that multiple competition achievements have been written into papers or entered the patent substantive examination and acceptance stage, and a series of innovative technologies formed during the competition process have been put into use on the front line of agricultural production after practical demonstration.
In addition to technology driven, sustainable development platforms also require a healthy, orderly, and compliant ecosystem. Especially in the current era of highly integrated digital technology and modern commerce, consumers and regulatory authorities have put forward higher requirements for e-commerce platforms. As a platform oriented enterprise, the group actively assumes responsibility, adheres to the bottom line of compliance, conducts forward-looking research on laws and regulations in various markets, invests resources, and strives to build first-class compliance capabilities in the industry. In the first quarter, the company continued to promote the "billion yuan ecological" special project and implemented a series of special governance actions. For example, to prevent improper promotion and display of information, the governance team optimizes the accuracy and coverage of image recognition, improves the ability and efficiency of problem image recognition, and achieves the deployment and interception of incremental content.
With high-quality development entering the deep water zone, Pinduoduo Group is also in a period of growth and investment. Zhao Jiazhen stated that high-quality development is a long-term, massive, and complex systematic project. In the future, continuous investment will be made in three aspects: consumer side, supply side, compliance, and platform ecology. "We will gather all forces, solidly promote and implement, and accelerate the achievement of the goals and tasks of this new stage of development.".
Chen Lei also emphasized that the e-commerce industry is in a rapid development stage, and competition and opportunities are accelerating to emerge. "The development of a company's business is not linear, but fluctuates. However, we believe that as long as we continue to focus on long-term value creation, all performance fluctuations will ultimately return to the endogenous value we continuously accumulate and grow."