Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo's quarterly revenue beat Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, driven by a sustained surge in online shopping.

Total revenue more than tripled to 22.17 billion yuan ($3.47 billion) in the first quarter, boosted by Pinduoduo's online marketing services revenue. Analysts on average had expected revenue of 20.2 billion yuan ($3.16 billion), according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Active buyers on Pinduoduo in the 12-month period that ended in March rose 31 percent to about 824 million, outpacing Alibaba's 811 million. Pinduoduo's shares rose more than 5 percent in pre-market trading on Wednesday, having dropped nearly 40 percent from their highs this year.

The Shanghai-based company has led China's adoption of social e-commerce, which melds online shopping with social media and allows buyers to reap greater discounts when shopping in bigger groups, helping it challenge bigger rivals Alibaba and JD.com.

"Our growing scale gives us both greater capacity as well as responsibility to live up to our mission to 'benefit all'," Chen Lei, chairman and chief executive of the company, said in a statement, adding that it was the company's goal to become the world's largest agriculture and grocery platform.

A relatively new platform, Pinduoduo is still to gain a stronghold in the Chinese e-commerce sector dominated by its larger rivals where per person spending is a lot higher.

The interactive buying platform's net loss attributable to shareholders narrowed to 2.91 billion yuan ($0.46 billion) in the quarter ended March 31, down from 4.12 billion yuan a year earlier.

(With input from Reuters)