China’s social commerce platform Pinduoduo has started a 12-day online shopping promotion for agricultural produce with 20,000 merchants participating on its platform, in a hope to generate 100 million buying orders, according to a press release of the company.
The products cover a wide variety of produce from across China, including, rice, dates, milk, and kiwi fruits.
Since the promotion started on Wednesday, Pinduoduo users have bought duck eggs in 16,000 orders and rice in 14,000 orders.
Monthly active users for Pinduoduo increased 19.12% in May month-on-month, the highest user growth among all e-commerce sites, said the company citing data from market research firm Trustdata. Average monthly active users in the first quarter were 289.7 million, according to Pinduoduo’s financial report.
Pinduoduo added that the platform gained 72.2 million new users in China’s third-to-fifth-tier cities and even rural areas, up 59.4% year-on-year, citing another market research firm QuestMobile.
“Agricultural products are what many new users bought first on Pinduoduo,” said Dong Yuan, senior director for Pinduoduo’s agriculture section, adding that “after three orders they could build trust with Pinduoduo and would buy more expensive products such as smartphones.