At 39, Colin Huang is the founder of Pinduoduo, an e-commerce start-up with impressive growth. After the IPO, he has an estimated fortune of $16.4bn (source Forbes 2019).
After creating several companies, Colin Huang has managed in five years to raise his platform, Pinduoduo to the rank of Alibaba and JD.com. Pinduoduo is now ranked just behind the two giants in China. Before understanding the company’s impressive growth, let’s try to understand the man. Born in Hangzhou, by working class parents, Colin Huang quickly understood that if he wanted to succeed it would be thanks to his abilities.
The award was a scholarship to a reputable school in Zhejiang Province, an opportunity for him to access a better education. In this school, he attended the Chinese elite and was even introduced to the daughter of the mayor of the city. This experience allowed him to be selected to study at Zhejiang University from where he graduated in computer science. Colin seized another opportunity by starting an internship at Microsoft in Beijing. His salary was already then higher than of his parents. He continued his internship in Seattle and took the opportunity to try his luck at the University of Wisconsin, successfully. Several of his teachers, impressed by his talent, sent him letters of recommendation. In 2004, at the end of his studies, he received offers from IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. But Colin refused these offers and choosed Google where he started as an engineer. After three years of collaboration, he returned to China and created Ouku, an online trading platform. He also launched the online game company Xinyoudi.
Pinduoduo means «together, more, more». The goal then was to create an innovative Chinese marketplace capable of competing with giants Alibaba and JD.com, well ahead of Pinduoduo. This delay, however, was not a problem for Colin Huang, who saw e-commerce and consumer habits changing in China and around the world. These transformations was, according to him, opportunities for new entrants. Colin Huang created a mid-market social e-commerce platform on which it is possible to buy «bundled» in order to obtain more competitive prices. Thus the more the number of buyers on a product increases, the lower the unit price. In addition, unlike other e-commerce sites, it is the sellers who ship the products, allowing the platform to further lower prices. The site mainly offers food and hygiene products. Chinese people in rural areas where e-commerce is underdeveloped and wages are lower are attracted by the concept. The craze is also present on the investor side. In less than a year, Colin Huang manages to raise funds from three giants: Tencent, Gaochun and Xintianyu for $ 100 million. In fact, this financing of Tencent (17.7% shareholder) is not trivial. Most Chinese people who are connected to WeChat now have the option of directly purchasing online through the email application. And this method, in keeping with the current consumption habits of Chinese people is extremely effective.
In 2018, after a few years of existence, Pinduoduo was listed on Nasdaq and raised $ 1.6 billion. The company was valued at more than $ 24 billion. Six months later, Pinduoduo wanted to increase its capital and raised between $ 1 and $ 1.5 billion. Colin Huang hopes to fund the growth of his company which already has 366M users on the mobile application per month. The company continues to gain ground, especially in major cities and is gradually breaking the rumors of counterfeiting which she was accused.
Between 2018 and 2019, the number of active customers grew by 88% and the losses of the company melted. The results, well beyond expectations, foreshadow a bright future for the young company. Colin Huang lives in Shanghai. He maintains a blog in which he talks about his various choices, projects and his state of mind. More than a leader, Colin Huang inspires a whole new generation of Chinese. The entrepreneur wants to mark the world and it looks good for.
"A few companies have tried this before, but no one has really been able to do it".
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