Google has been added to the latest contributors to China's tech drive. Though indirectly; a former Google engineer has set-up a fledgling company which is set to break into the billion dollar barrier pretty soon.
Bloomberg's report singles out Colin Huang, a Silicon Valley veteran, as the "new kid on the block" of Chinese startups who want to add to the tech pie. Years ago, the Google engineer quit his job at the company to go back to his country. Little did he know that his company, Pinduoduo Inc., would soon become the hottest startup ever, worth $8.3 billion in earnings.
Colin Huang managed to start Pinduoduo with funding from Chinese company Tencent Holdings Ltd. The actual amount is pegged to be somewhere around $9.9 - $8.3 billion, making Huang the 16th-richest person among China's CEOs.
The PDD app is one of the many shopping apps available on China's online platform. The idea of it is to 'share' the expenses among friends; PDD lets people ship with other people online in order to take advantage of the discounts being offered on a select group of products, according to Next Shark.
This innovation-the sharing not only of expenses, but of ideas, reviews, and even your run-of-the-mill word-of-mouth information about a product-has been tried many times, Huang admits. However, he also reiterates that they are, so far, the only company to successfully offer a working version of the concept.
Technology has been the main key to success for a lot of startups and this is no different for Huang. Tech accounts for bringing financial success to the people belonging to the top 10 richest in China. PDD, for its part, would become worth $21 billion once an IPO deal gets completed. The looming trade problems between the US and China isn't set to affect it too.
PDD was able to get here due to the distribution of 250 million shares which is valued at $1 billion collectively. As to what he plans to do with the extra money, Colin Huang is said to funnel some of those shares to a couple of charitable foundations under his name.
