Pinduoduo reached the Nasdaq less than three years after its founding, with more than 340 million active buyers. Its trick was the group deal. Shoppers shared a product with friends on WeChat, and if enough joined, everyone paid less. The app found its users in China's smaller cities, far from the shoppers that Alibaba and JD.com chased. When it went public in July 2018, it raised $1.6 billion.

A Google Engineer Goes Home

Colin Huang worked as an engineer at Google before he returned to China and started several companies. He founded Pinduoduo in Shanghai in 2015. The bet was that shopping could feel like a game played with friends. Farmers sold fruit straight to groups of buyers. Factories sold cheap goods in bulk. Each deal shared on WeChat pulled in new shoppers.

From Shanghai to Temu

Pinduoduo priced its American depositary shares at $19 each, the top of its range, in July 2018. They closed their first day at $26.70, up 40 percent. In 2022 the company launched Temu, a shopping app for buyers in the United States and Europe. In 2023 it renamed itself PDD Holdings and moved its headquarters to Dublin, Ireland. It still trades on Nasdaq under PDD.

Cover: The Fruit Sellers, William Henry Fox Talbot. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for fruit sellers at market (group-bought produce).