China’s social commerce company Pinduoduo will expand its quality control team by adding another 500 staff members this year, said its founder and chairman Huang Zheng during the firm’s latest earnings call. Pinduoduo is sending the signal that it’s serious about tackling the problem of counterfeit products on its platform.
However, the first line of defense against fake products will be to “leverage technology”, such as keyword identification, image filtering, automated text and video recognition, said Huang.
Pinduoduo, which is headquartered in Shanghai, was subject to an investigation launched by China’s State Administration for Market Regulation last year, with local regulators scrutinizing the firm for its reputation of allowing the sale of counterfeit items on its site. The investigation came right after the company debuted its trading on Nasdaq.
In 2018, the company “took down more than 60,000 stores that were selling infringing products. We have also blocked over 30 million links that were suspected of infringing,” Huang revealed on the earnings call.
The firm says the number of merchants on its site and app reached 3.6 million as of end-2018, increasing from approximately 1 million by the end of March 2018.
“We plan to further attract and incentivize high quality merchants to offer better SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit) and services to our users,” said Huang. Pinduoduo has started to recruit international retailers to set up online stores on its app, KrAsia reported last month.
Editor: Nadine Freischlad