Pinduoduo, the latest challenger to China’s ecommerce dominators Alibaba and JD.com, wants to bring affordable, imported items to shoppers in China’s smaller cities and rural areas. The three-year-old Tencent-backed ecommerce upstart is recruiting importers to set up shop on its marketplace, shows a message on its website. The business is known for offering cheap, sometimes […]
View More Alibaba challenger Pinduoduo is bringing imported goods to rural homesCategory: Hangzhou
China wants its rural villages to go cashless by 2020
Residents of even the tiniest far-flung villages in China may soon be able to pay on their phones to run daily errands as Beijing announced this month that it aims to make mobile payments ubiquitous in rural areas by the end of 2020. The plan arrived in a set of guidelines (document link in Chinese) […]
View More China wants its rural villages to go cashless by 2020As shared kitchens heat up, a China-based startup, Panda Selected, nabs $50 million led by Tiger Global
A few weeks ago, we told you that former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick looks to be partnering with the former COO of the bike-sharing startup Ofo, Yanqi Zhang, to bring his new L.A.-based company, CloudKitchens, to China. Kalanick didn’t respond to our request for more information, but according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), his […]
View More As shared kitchens heat up, a China-based startup, Panda Selected, nabs $50 million led by Tiger GlobalAmazon is reportedly merging its China import unit with NetEase
You’d be forgiven for not knowing Amazon has operated in China for more than a decade, but perhaps not for much longer. The company is reportedly in talks to merge its China-based import business with local peer Kaola, the cross-border shopping platform run by Chinese internet behemoth NetEase, Caijing reported (link in Chinese) on Tuesday. The deal, […]
View More Amazon is reportedly merging its China import unit with NetEaseAlibaba’s growth slows to lowest in 3 years
China’s Alibaba continues to see slowing expansion in the latest quarter, but the e-commerce giant’s effort to spur new growth from new arenas have started to bear fruit. The Hangzhou-based firm rang up $17 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2019. That’s a 41 percent increase from the previous year but it also […]
View More Alibaba’s growth slows to lowest in 3 yearsThe end of China’s ride-sharing gig
Over the last few years, millions of Chinese workers managed to earn extra money by being ride-hailing drivers. Many picked the gig because of its flexible schedule. For those who could not otherwise afford to own a car in China’s pricy metropolises, driving around is also a status symbol, even if they are paying off […]
View More The end of China’s ride-sharing gigFedEx is adding 1,000 Chanje vans to electrify its fleet
FedEx is turning to a relatively new and unknown startup as it ramps up its efforts to electrify its fleet of delivery vans. The company announced Tuesday plans to add 1,000 electric delivery vehicles from Chanje Energy, a California-based and China-backed startup founded in 2015. FedEx is purchasing 100 of the vehicles from Chanje Energy. It will lease […]
View More FedEx is adding 1,000 Chanje vans to electrify its fleet11/11 shows biometrics are the norm for payments in China
Chinese consumers were quick to adopt digital payments, and a recent shopping binge showed they are ready for another leap: biometric payments. On November 11, Alibaba wrapped up Singles’ Day – the world’s largest shopping event – and hauled in $30.8 billion in total transactions, a staggering amount bigger than Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined. […]
View More 11/11 shows biometrics are the norm for payments in ChinaThe dramatic rise and fall of online P2P lending in China
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. When Emily Zhang was interning with a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending firm in the Summer of 2016, her main task was to carry out research on other P2P lending firms. She found the rates of return tempting and some underlying […]
View More The dramatic rise and fall of online P2P lending in ChinaWeWork China raises $500M to triple the number of cities it covers
WeWork’s China business is getting a fresh injection of capital after it raised $500 million. The company entered China two years ago and today it covers Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu with nearly 40 locations. It claims 20,000 members, and it is also active in Hong Kong, which technically falls under ‘Greater China.’ The new capital […]
View More WeWork China raises $500M to triple the number of cities it covers