PDD Holdings Inc.

Pinduoduo was founded in 2015 by Chinese businessman and software engineer Colin Huang and initially focused on the agriculture industry. It developed at a time when Alibaba and JD had significantly consolidated the Chinese e-commerce market and many analysts believed there was limited room for new market entrants.

On 7 June 2018, Legal Evening News reported that Pinduoduo investigated and shut down stores and removed listings that violated its platform policy against pornography and violence, following an earlier report by the newspaper.

On 20 January 2019, Pinduoduo reported to the police theft by hackers that exploited a loophole in their system and stole tens of millions of Yuan worth of vouchers.

During the initial COVID-19 lockdown in China in 2020, Pinduoduo started a program to assist rural Chinese farmers with selling their produce to customers online instead of relying on traditional in-person marketplaces. In August 2020, Pinduoduo launched Duo Duo Maicai, a service which enables consumers to preorder groceries for pickup at designated locations.

In 2020, Pinduoduo launched its B2B platform Duoduo Wholesale (Duoduo Pifa) to connect merchants with manufacturers and wholesalers. The feature was initially introduced without transaction commissions or promotion fees in order to attract suppliers. It mainly focused on the Chinese domestic market and primarily served merchants and suppliers operating within China. In 2020, Pinduoduo overtook Alibaba as China's top shopping app by user count, reaching 788.4 million annual active buyers by year's end, just edging Alibaba's 779 million (Tmall and Taobao combined). This marked the first major challenge to the dominance of Alibaba and JD.com in the market. Pinduoduo pioneered viral sharing via WeChat, creating shopping teams where customers share product links with friends and family for group discounts. This turned customers into marketers with zero ad spend among segments in rural or low-income areas that Alibaba had traditionally ignored.

Pinduoduo generated RMB 4.17 trillion (US$590 billion) gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2021.

In September 2022, Pinduoduo's sister's company, Temu, was launched in the U.S. by PDD Holdings.

In 2023, PDD Holdings changed its legal domicile from Shanghai to Dublin.

In 2025-12-08, PDD launched Malaysia campaign, users in Malaysia can buy goods in PDD app with free shipping.

In March 2026, Pinduoduo announced the launch of 'Xinpinmu' (新拼姆), a new division to support the company's private-label projects. It is Pinduoduo's self-operated brand plan for the domestic and global market. It is not a new e-commerce platform, but PDD itself will manage the operation of its own brands directly.