It's not that Pinduoduo doesn't want to venture into food delivery; it's that it can't.

Written by | HSTL Xiong Jianhui

The trillion-dollar instant retail market remains out of Pinduoduo's reach.

[Absence]

In 2025, the e-commerce industry is once again in turmoil. JD.com made a high-profile entry into the food delivery market, directly competing with Meituan. Subsequently, Taobao teamed up with Ele.me for a swift strike, and even Douyin quietly launched its local services business...

Behind this, everyone is fighting not just for food delivery but for the broader instant retail market that sells everything like food delivery does.

As a result, this year's 618 shopping festival has a different atmosphere. From JD.com's "instant delivery" to Taobao's "flash purchase," instant retail has not only gained a "primary access" on large comprehensive e-commerce platforms but also dragged Meituan into the 618 battle.

However, amidst the fierce competition among these platforms, one entity remains conspicuously silent—Pinduoduo, which used to be ubiquitous with its "cut a price" campaign, is practically inactive in this new battle that no one dares to overlook.

Amidst the various fast delivery and flash delivery teams, there isn't a single piece of clothing or hat from Pinduoduo.

Why is Pinduoduo absent?

Some say it's because Pinduoduo lost its main battlefield, so it simply doesn't have the strength to fight a new war.

Comparing the latest financial reports of Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, this seems plausible. In the first quarter of 2025, Alibaba and JD.com's net profits increased significantly by 279% and 53.5% year-on-year, respectively, showing robust growth and a clear trend.

But during the same period, Pinduoduo's net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders and non-GAAP net profit decreased significantly by 47% and 45% year-on-year, respectively.

Upon the release of these explosive financial report data, Pinduoduo's share price plummeted by 20%, falling below the $100 mark.

Chen Lei, Chairman of the Board and Co-CEO of Pinduoduo, said, "This means that in the short term, and even for a considerable period, our profits will face significant pressure and challenges."

Additionally, industry observers argue that low prices aren't a special skill anymore; Alibaba and JD.com have now also been forced to learn it, so they are reclaiming what once belonged to them.

With poor performance and a "lack of money," Pinduoduo remains low-key and restrained in instant retail.

But a closer look at the financial report reveals that this viewpoint doesn't hold up. The first-quarter financial report for 2025 shows that although Pinduoduo's revenue growth slowed down and profits dropped significantly, it held "cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments" amounting to RMB 364.5 billion.

Obviously, Pinduoduo not only has money but is quite wealthy.

Therefore, poor performance is not the reason for its absence from instant retail.

[Defects]

The fundamental reason for Pinduoduo's absence from instant retail is that Pinduoduo simply cannot do instant retail.

At least, compared to others, it has no foundation in instant retail.

The core of "instant retail" is "faster, closer, better, more," providing consumers with better and more instant transactions and delivery services faster and closer.

This means that practitioners must have sufficient nearby inventory, an adequate delivery system, and sufficient experience in operating this system, continuously evolving and optimizing through manual and intelligent means. The core is:

First, to provide services centered around urban and community commercial entities; second, to build an extremely efficient and fast logistics system.

Pinduoduo has inherent defects in these two aspects.

First, users and the market do not match.

The main battlefield of instant retail is concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, connecting with a large number of mid-to-high-end customers and high-quality products, pursuing "closer, better, more."

However, Pinduoduo has long focused on low prices, mainly targeting low-income groups and rural markets.

In terms of products, due to the emphasis on extreme low prices, counterfeit and shoddy products are rampant on the platform, with continuous substitution of inferior products for superior ones.

In terms of marketing strategies, Pinduoduo further strengthens its low-price advantage through methods such as the endless loop of "cut a price."

While this has indeed achieved user fission and explosive revenue growth, it has also buried hidden dangers of losing high-quality customers and collapsing business reputation.

Second, the logistics shortcomings are obvious.

Instant retail emphasizes "faster," not "next-day delivery," but rather "hourly delivery" or "minute delivery."

This means investing heavily in building a self-owned logistics system to ensure reliability.

However, for a long time, Pinduoduo has adhered to the principle of "the platform doesn't touch goods," outsourcing warehousing and logistics to third parties, such as cooperating with J&T Express and Deppon Express.

While this enables Pinduoduo to achieve huge logistics turnover with extremely low investment and reduce business risks, once it enters the instant retail battlefield, the disadvantage of lacking a professional delivery team and system becomes immediately exposed as a significant shortcoming.

Moreover, even if someone has a team, the long-distance delivery of express services and the requirements of instant retail are two different systems and are not the same thing at all.

In fact, as early as 2020, Pinduoduo launched "Duoduo Maicai" to test the waters of instant retail.

At that time, more than 2,000 of Pinduoduo's over 6,000 employees were deployed to Duoduo Maicai, demonstrating its importance.

However, it still relied on the usual tactics of low-price subsidies and group-buying fission, hoping for rapid expansion.

Some called it the "barbarian selling vegetables."

But it quickly discovered that this approach simply wouldn't work in instant retail.

Not to mention that demand is mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, with low overlap and difficult conversion with Pinduoduo's users, making expansion challenging; even in terms of merchants, Pinduoduo lacks cooperation with offline merchants in first- and second-tier cities. Even merchants such as fruits, pastries, flowers, catering, and hotels have to be temporarily recruited. Coupled with the lack of diverse products, this further increases the difficulty of attracting users.

In terms of logistics, while Meituan has already achieved "hourly delivery," Duoduo Maicai, in collaboration with community group buying, can only manage "next-day delivery," with costs remaining high.

In 2024, the topic "Duoduo Maicai's local life business has been completely suspended" surged to the top of Weibo's trending topics.

This test run in instant retail ended in a complete failure for Pinduoduo.

Since then, Pinduoduo has not made any new moves or investments in instant retail until the industry changed again this year.

Therefore, Pinduoduo's non-participation in instant retail is not because it doesn't want to, but because it can't.

[Missing Out]

For an e-commerce enterprise, not being able to keep up with instant retail has serious consequences.

According to iMedia Consulting's "2025-2026 China's Instant Delivery Platform Trend Insight Report" for the sinking market: In 2024, the scale of China's instant logistics users reached 799 million, a year-on-year increase of 9.1%; it is estimated that by 2030, the user scale will exceed 1 billion people.

▲Source: Ministry of Commerce, "Development Report of the Instant Retail Industry (2024)"

Additionally, according to data from the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, Ministry of Commerce: In 2023, China's instant retail scale reached RMB 650 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of 29%; it is estimated that by 2030, this figure will exceed RMB 2 trillion.

More importantly, instant retail has also cultivated user habits and is the main battlefield for competing for users. Instant retail is often more frequent and has higher user stickiness. Whoever captures users will capture the future, which also means that the future trend may exclude those who fail to engage in instant retail from becoming the mainstream choice of users.

For example, agricultural products, on which Pinduoduo has invested a lot of effort, are now increasingly leaning towards instant retail through community group buying. But if Pinduoduo still cannot hold onto this position, its competitive advantage in this field will also cease to exist.

Facing this market with an increment of over a trillion and a crucial future, Pinduoduo's answer is: it can't and is incapable.

While losing ground in future growth poles, Pinduoduo's home base is also facing unprecedented challenges.

First, the era is turning the page on low-price competition, and e-commerce has become a key area for regulatory rectification, which is undoubtedly a major blow to Pinduoduo's long-term low-price model. The decline in its latest performance and profits may very well be caused by this.

Second, Temu, which replicates Pinduoduo's low-price model overseas, also faces criticism and even counterattacks from overseas markets.

These factors combined mean that for Pinduoduo, which once rose rapidly, how to attack and defend has obviously reached a critical moment.

[Reference Materials]

[1] "Development Report of the Instant Retail Industry (2024)" Ministry of Commerce

—END—

Welcome to follow [HSTL] to recognize influential figures and read tales of strategy.

All rights reserved. Private reprinting is prohibited.

Some images are sourced from the internet. If infringement is involved, please contact us for deletion.