By UOB-Kay Hian
PDD Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PDD) has made significant strides expanding overseas through its Temu low-cost shopping app. Most recently it set up a website in Brazil, which will become its bulkhead in South America. Temu’s establishment of networks in Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Australia come as it faces growing competition, as well as regulatory challenges in Europe and Southeast Asia.
Temu’s Brazilian website came online on June 6, marking an important milestone in its expansion into South America, and representing its 70th website for a national market. This follows its move last May into Mexico where it quickly asserted itself to become the most popular e-commerce app in terms of monthly active users (MAU). It had 19 million users by the end of this May, more than the 15.3 million for MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI) and 4.8 million for Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN).
The Brazilian website touts generous discounts and free delivery on its homepage. For every 160 reals ($29.60) in purchases, consumers get a discount of 16 reals. If the purchase reaches 240 reals, the discount rises to 60 ...