Chen Ying of Shihuituan: Why Community Group Buy Works in China
Today on the show we have Chen Ying. Ying is the founder and CEO of Shihuituan, the leading community commerce company in China. The literal meaning of Shihuituan means plenty of things. It's also a pun for value for money.
With its network of 80,000 community influencers, the company currently serves 20 million households in 60 cities in China. For November of 2019, it recorded a monthly GMV of 500 million RMB （roughly 71 million dollars). Shihuituan is a GGV portfolio.
Before launching Shihuituan, Ying founded an NGO aimed at helping farmers selling their goods online and another eCommerce company called "The Good Stuff". Ying worked in Bain Consulting and Bain Capital for 5 years before he got his MBA from Harvard Business School. Calling himself an intellectual cowboy, Ying has always been fascinated by the next frontier, which in his mind is the space, Africa and rural China.
We discussed the ins and outs of how the community group buy model works, including how he found the product market fit, the role social apps play in this business model, the multi-layer delivery system, and the replicability of this model in other markets.
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