Dingdong Maicai

Dingdong Maicai is a Chinese fresh-grocery e-commerce company founded in May 2017, built on a model of direct sourcing from farms, neighborhood "front warehouses" (前置仓), and delivery as fast as 29 minutes — per Gaorong Ventures, which backed it in three rounds in 2018 and was the sole investor in the first two . Founder and CEO Liang Changlin has framed the playbook as doing "the hard and unsexy things": bypassing intermediaries to source roughly 80% of goods directly from origin, running fully self-operated warehouses and delivery, and holding a 32% gross margin against the industry assumption that fresh produce earns single digits . The growth was steep — from 345 front warehouses and 400,000 daily orders in mid-2019 , to nearly 550 warehouses across six cities and 700 million RMB in monthly revenue by end-2019 , then 950 front warehouses in 29 cities and 11.3 billion RMB in 2020 revenue, up 192% year on year, ahead of its June 2021 NYSE listing .