The Chinese online grocery and delivery firm Dada-JD Daojia has revealed that it has raised $500 million (roughly £388.7 million) from Walmart and JD.com to continue the expansion of its network. As a key competitor to Alibaba in China, the rivals are backing a key competitor when it comes to the fulfilment space. For Walmart, China represents another crucial Asian arena. Their acquisition of Flipkart in India was formally approved this week.
Already partly owned by JD, the business comprises of two different aspects: Dada is a big network of 5 million delivery people based around China and the JD Daojia portion works with retail stores and offers a one-hour delivery service for existing shops.
Walmart says that it has put in $320 million during this round but it’s not the first investment they have made. Walmart’s association with Dada-JD Daojia began back in 2016 when it invested $50 million and now 200 Walmart stores in 30 Chinese cities are using the JD Daojia offerings. So, with this additional money, they clearly expect to expand the association in the years to come.
We are confident that this deeper collaboration with Dada-JD Daojia will enhance our omni-channel footprint and deliver a better O2O (online to offline) customer experience.
– Wern-Yuen Tan, president and CEO for Walmart China
What is JD.com?
You’ll know Walmart, but if you’re not familiar with JD.com, then check out our article earlier in the year as part of our Marketplaces 2018 series.
JD.com or Jingdong Mall is the second largest business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce site in China. JD is also China’s largest retailer. JD.com has 240 million registered users and 188 million active shoppers. And whilst it is open to third-party merchants, it is better suited to bigger merchants. Although, that may change as they expand: they are expected to make some key announcements about European expansion later in 2018, in addition to their core Asian marketplaces.
