Pinduoduo has announced an all-time high record for its daily orders, surpassing a peak of more than 100 million at China’s National Day holiday in October — a turning point that bodes well for the country’s e-commerce and agricultural industries.
According to Chen Lei, Pinduoduo’s Chief Executive Officer, the new record was driven by big demand for agricultural products — further solidifying the site’s reputation as China’s biggest agricultural online marketplace.
In comparison, the company processes a daily average of more than 70 million parcels, accounting for a third of the national total, Chen told reporters after a recent poverty alleviation event.
The brand new milestone is just one of the many remarkable feats for Pinduoduo in 2020. Since its founding in 2015, the internet giant has also grown rapidly to become the second-biggest e-commerce platform overall with close to 700 million users. This comes at a time where consumer shopping behavior continues to shift digitally.
The company, which recently turned five this month, is a member of the Nasdaq-100 Index and has surpassed $100 billion in market capitalization earlier this year, the fastest-ever company to reach that milestone.
Increasing China’s Agricultural Productivity
As a company that initially started selling fruits and fresh produce, Pinduoduo also remains steadfast in its mission to invest in new technologies and programs that will boost agricultural productivity.
The company recently announced its plans to increase its involvement in cold-chain and agricultural-related logistics infrastructure. It also hopes to work with the logistics industry to come up with a standardized packaging for agricultural products, Chen said. This move is predicted to benefit suppliers and optimize the "first kilometer" of the farm supply chain.
At a forum earlier this month to discuss how to improve agricultural sales, Chen pointed out that the main hindrances were the low level of digitization, unstable quality of agricultural products, the difficulty to standardize production, and the asymmetry in production and marketing information.
He also pointed out the importance of raising the industry’s digitization level, a goal that can be met by continuing to nurture “New Farmers” in agriculture and e-commerce.
"The relevant departments need to put in more resources, the e-commerce platforms need to create dedicated posts to jointly build a model with the government and institutes of higher learning to train online sales talents," Chen told the forum.
To support this vision for the industry, Pinduoduo has recently pledged to train another 100,000 e-commerce merchants to boost farm sales through online channels. Many of these "New Farmers" are youths who have left their rural hometowns to work in cities. Through training courses held by Pinduoduo, they will learn how to set up and manage their own e-commerce businesses.
All of these newly planned efforts and initiatives are part of the e-commerce giant’s commitment to improving the livelihoods of farmers and improving rural economies in China. By making this happen, Pinduoduo hopes to see stronger gains in the agricultural industry’s penetration in the country's digital economy.
