Pinduoduo posted its first-ever quarterly net profit as a public company and pledged on Tuesday to donate those and future earnings toward the development of agriculture until it has given away a total of 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion).
The fund will be used to boost the income of low-income groups, improve health care coverage, help rural economic development, and support grass roots education, Tencent said in a midnight statement hours after its second-quarter earnings call. “As a Chinese tech company blessed by China’s reform and opening up, Tencent has always been thinking how to help social development with its own technologies and digital power,” it said. The fund reflects the company’s sense of urgency to respond to Beijing’s call on the rich as well as big companies to give back to society through charity, the company also said in its statement.