JD vs Alibaba: The war for China’s fresh food

Before Xiaohui leaves the office at the end of a long workday, she picks up her phone and begins thumbing the screen. “The carrots and spareribs will be delivered when I get home in an hour,” she says. Married with a five-year-old, she used to pick up ingredients for dinner from a grocery store on her way home. Now, the meat, vegetables, and fruit are only a few taps away.

Among the half-dozen produce apps Xiaohui uses are Fruit Day (天天果园) and Yiguo (易果), two of China’s major fresh produce shopping sites. They are also, unsurprisingly, backed by the twin e-commerce titans JD.com and Alibaba respectively.

The giants have convinced Chinese people that they can buy nearly everything—from clothing to cars—via the mobile screen, and are now telling them that they don’t need to touch the bok choi before serving them to the table. In 2015 and 2016, JD lay out two rounds for Fruit Day. In August, Yiguo nailed $300 million from Alibaba’s B2C e-commerce Tmall (in Chinese), adding to the previous three rounds that Alibaba had put in.

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