Group buying e-commerce platform Pinduoduo has confirmed that its founder Huang Zheng, more commonly known as Colin Huang, will step down as chairman. He will be succeeded by co-founder and current CEO Chen Lei. In a letter to shareholders, Huang Zheng said:
“After resigning as chairman, I will focus on my lifelong interests and devote myself to research in the fields of food science and life sciences.”
The announcement came on the same day that Pinduoduo released its Q4 and full-year financial reports for 2020. The platform had 788.4 million active consumers at the end of 2020, which was an increase of 57.1 million users in the fourth quarter, and a total of 200 million new active consumers over the year. The growth meant that its users exceeded that of Alibaba.
Pinduoduo’s revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020 was 26.55 billion RMB ($4.08 billion), compared to 10.79 billion RMB ($1.66 billion) during the same period the year before. The net loss for the whole year of 2020 was 7.18 billion RMB ($1.10 billion), up from 6.97 billion RMB ($1.07 billion) in 2019.
The e-commerce platform has invested heavily in agriculture and is popular among rural merchants.
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