According to local report, Shanda is investing over RMB 2 billion (US$ 309 million) in ecommerce site Pinju.com with two other undisclosed participants. Founded by Ge Binbin, the former head of Goldcool Games, Pinju is set to debut in this Oct. Ge said that Shanda accounts for 40% of the total sum, or US$ 123 million.
Pinju is still under beta testing, the latest comer to the highly crowded and fierce competing Chinese ecommerce market is featuring all kinds of goods ranging from cosmetics, clothes, maternity and baby products, electric appliance, home supplies, health products, 3C products to luxurious brands including Hermes, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Armani, Gucci and so on. It seems Pinju is positioned to be an online general store.
It’s known to all that majority of Chinese online shopping sites(except for 360buy, the Chinese B2C giant announced its departure with Alipay because of high commission fee) partner with Alipay, using the latter’s online payment solution, whereas Pinju will feature Shenpay, the online payment offering by shanda. That makes sense, just like Paipai refers its customers to Tenpay, Tencent’s approach to online payment.
Shanda has long been rumored to keep an eye on the lucrative and promising Chinese ecommerce waterfront, according to the Beijing-based market research firm iResearch, the market size will passes RMB 10 trillion (US$ 154.6 billion) by 2013, how can one miss out on a chunk from this.
US$154.6 billion is a huge amount.