[New report] Will Pinduoduo’s Temu dethrone Amazon in US market?

Have you seen this ad on Super Bowl Sunday?

The company behind is Temu – a cross-border commerce platform launched by PDD Holdings, the parent company of Pinduoduo, a leading ecommerce company in China. 

Launched only in September 2022, Temu went very aggressive with acquiring customers in the United States (and now Canada). It has topped the chart of ecommerce apps in the US within weeks, and allegedly set aside billions of dollars for marketing.  

Many have been dismissive of Temu, saying that it is another aggressive Chinese platform that just spends, but without really understanding the US market. However, haven’t they seen what TikTok and SHEIN have achieved in the North American market? 

So who is Temu? Who are the people behind it? Are they a real threat to Amazon’s dominance? 

Today Momentum Works is releasing a new report “Who is Temu: Will Pinduoduo’s global ambitions dethrone Amazon?” This report attempts to provide a comprehensive view of Temu’s strategy, timing as well as Pinduoduo – the driving force behind. 

“Who is Temu: Will Pinduoduo’s global ambitions dethrone Amazon?” is available for download here.

Here are some highlights of the report:

• Pinduoduo, the company behind Temu, was only founded in 2015 but very quickly became a major platform challenging the dominance of Alibaba and JD.com. In 2020 Pinduoduo’s annual active customers reached 788 million, higher than Alibaba. 

• Pinduoduo’s C2M strategy reverses the traditional supply chain, and brings massive efficiency in multiple categories, and in particular agricultural products: 

• Many doubted that Pinduoduo, which was spending billions of Yuan on subsidies, would ever make money. The company proved all of them wrong, and became very profitable. 

• In fact, amongst all the major ecommerce platforms in the world, Pinduoduo was the only one with a rising share price in turbulent 2022: 

• Temu builds on more than 10 years of Chinese cross-border ecommerce into the US market – notably the successes and failures of SHEIN, Wish as well as Chinese sellers on Amazon: 

• Like many other Chinese tech platforms, Temu builds its strategy on a principle first mentioned by revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. The particular value propositions of Temu are: selection and savings: 

More insights

Temu entered the US market at a very interesting time – a confluence of factors including rising inflation and geopolitics could make or break the audacious attempt. 

To read more about our assessment on Temua and Pinduoduo, do download your copy of the report. 

You can also find more reports on Chinese tech companies as well as ecommerce sector on the Momentum Works insights page.