JD.com is positioning itself as a retail infrastructure service provider by empowering retailers with innovative technology.
"We will become retail-as-a-service [RaaS], providing our technology to enable manufacturers to improve their products according to customers' requirements," said Chen Zhang, chief technology of JD.com Inc, the largest Chinese e-commerce company in terms of revenue and the third-largest global internet company.
Mr Zhang said it's a matter of co-creation, in which consumers play more of a participatory role with merchants and manufacturers.
Being an RaaS is part of JD.com's ambitious mission to be a global e-commerce player. The company expanded first overseas to Indonesia 18 months ago. JD.com recently announced an aggregate investment of up to US$500 million (16.5 billion baht) with Central Group to establish two joint ventures in Thailand covering e-commerce and fintech services.
Under the terms of the agreement, half of the investment will come from Central Group, with the remainder coming from JD.com and JD.com's strategic partner for its Indonesian e-commerce business, JD Finance and Provident Capital.
Across both the e-commerce and the fintech business, Central Group will leverage its extensive retail resources, including its physical store network, which will serve as key omni-channel and payment locations, its brand and merchant relationships, as well as its retail behaviour insights from its popular customer loyalty programme, the 1 Card.
To strengthen the product offering, and to accelerate its own omnichannel business growth, Central Group will open multiple flagships stores of its omnichannel businesses on the new joint e-commerce platform.
JD.com will provide its extensive expertise in technology, e-commerce and logistics to the e-commerce joint venture.
Meanwhile, the fintech services joint venture is expected to benefit from JD Finance's deep knowledge in the financial technology sector, including its experience building easy-to-use fintech services in developing markets using its artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other industry-leading technology capabilities.
"Thailand's mobile-driven population, with its increasing consumer spending power, makes e-commerce ready to explode, and this partnership is poised to better serve the country's consumers as they migrate online," said Tos Chirathivat, chief executive of Central Group.
