Pinduoduo Launches Enterprise Collaboration Tool Knock to Support Work-From-Home amid Coronavirus

Pinduoduo has identified the market needs and capitalized on the opportunities during the world's most massive work from home experiment

FREMONT, CA: Pinduoduo, a social e-commerce platform, has joined other Chinese companies to offer remote working tools, as several employees have opted to work from home amid the coronavirus outbreak. Knock, the internal collaboration platform of the company, has been opened to both corporate and individual users. According to the details listed on Apple's App store, the platform offers a number of features like instant messaging, conference calls, and document sharing.

One of Pinduoduo's spokeswoman said that the company developed Knock as an internal communication tool to effectively address the its ever increasing employee base. "It is now available for our ecosystem partners to communicate with our staff as effective communication is key to better serve our 585 million users," she added.

The value of the on-demand enterprise software industry in China is growing very fast. The industry is expected to hit 65.4 billion yuan by 2021, which was 24.4 billion yuan (US $3.5 billion) in the year 2018, says a report by China IPO data provider iResearch.

The coronavirus pandemic has boosted the industry by forcing employees to work from home and use remote working tools. Pinduoduo has identified the market needs and capitalized on the opportunities during the world's most massive work from home experiment.

Until now, DingTalk, the Chinese equivalent of Slack owned by Alibaba Group Holding, has been used by over six million companies for remote working. DingTalk had earlier launched a free "remote office" function facilitating video conferencing and live streaming for around 300 participants, besides facilities like online document-editing and approval, informs Alibaba's last month statement.

During the coronavirus outbreak i.e., from February 2 to February 29, there has been a 356 percent increase in downloads of the DingTalk from both Android smartphones and iPhone in mainland China. Tencent Holdings' WeChat Work and ByteDan's Lark also recorded high downloads of 171 and 650 percent respectively in the same period, says a mobile research firm App Annie.

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