Wang Boyuan from Technode and TechCrunch China joined us for a conversation on Jingdong or JD.com. We discussed the backstory behind the company and the key people behind the second largest e-commerce company in China. He also explained the different revenue streams behind JD.com and how Tencent is backing of it as a proxy against Alibaba in China’s e-commerce space.
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Notes:
- Wang Boyuan, Writer and Editor, TechCrunch China [0:50]
- How did you start your career in journalism? [1:10]
- What are the interesting stories that you have covered this week? [1:40]
- Warcraft’s movie success in China
- JD.com or Jingdong [2:55]
- E-commerce company, listed on NASDAQ at US$31.2B market capitalization, founded by Liu Qiangdong in 1998.
- What’s the mission and vision of JD.com? [3:10]
- What’s the backstory of JD.com and how it did evolve from 360buy.com to JD.com? [4:00]
- Tencent’s investment in JD.com [6:40]
- Who are the key executives in JD.com besides the founder Liu Qiangdong? [7:00]
- Shen Haoyu 沈皓瑜, the CEO of JD Mall.
- Who are the board of directors within JD.com? [8:00]
- Liu has 82.5% of voting power in the board. Martin Lau, President of Tencent sits on the board. Louis Hsieh from New Oriental is linked to Xu Xiaoping of Zhenfund, “The Ron Conway of China”.
- What are the core revenue drivers for JD.com? [9:00]
- Retail sales are still their main income. In Q1 of 2016, JD.com earned 54 billion yuan ($8.3 billion) in net revenue, up 47.3 percent year on year, with its gross merchandise volume growing by 55 percent to about 129 billion yuan. Orders rose by over 50 percent in the first three months with more than two thirds coming from mobile terminals such as smartphones.
- Is JD.com in iOS and Android and also in WeChat? [9:50]
- What are the core features on the JD.com platform and some of the recent innovations introduced to the e-commerce platform (for example, equivalent of JD Prime similar to Amazon Prime, Amazon dash buttons)? [10:24]
- How does JD.com compare with Alibaba, for example, their clash on Singles Day? What’s the strategic partnership between Tencent and JD.com? [15:13]
- JD.com has a financing arm called JD Finance, and recently, the parent company invested US$1B along with Sequoia and other players into JD Finance. What’s the rationale behind this move? [16:23]
- Will JD.com expand out to the world soon? [20:13]