[BEIJING] JD.com founder Richard Liu vowed to speed up an overseas foray and compete with Meituan in new arenas from food delivery to travel, describing his boldest attempt yet to revive an online retailer that’s languished since a 2020 government crackdown.
The past half-decade was the darkest period for his company, Liu said during a rare news conference at JD’s Beijing headquarters on Tuesday (Jun 17). The company lost its way, the 52-year-old tech mogul said, at a time when rivals such as PDD Holdings surged ahead. JD’s future growth should all be about leveraging a battle-tested logistics network in areas such as meal delivery, where it’s making headway despite initial losses, the founder said.
“For JD, it’s a lost five years, to put it bluntly,” Liu said in comments published in Chinese media, which a company spokesperson later confirmed.
“No innovation, no growth, no progress. It should be considered the most unremarkable and least-valuable five years in my entrepreneurial history,” Liu told reporters on the eve of JD’s signature Jun 18 shopping festival.
In March, JD made an aggressive entry into China’s US$80 billion-plus food delivery market, a long-dormant arena controlled by Meituan and Alibaba Group Holding’s Ele.me.
Liu personally handed out takeouts to customers during a publicity stunt, gave away 10 billion yuan (S$1.8 billion) in user subsidies, and promised above-industry benefits for his army of 100,000 delivery riders. His offensive has forced the two rivals to step up discounts and coupons in a similar fashion, a renewed price battle that quickly caught the attention of regulators.
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About 40 per cent of JD’s new food-delivery users have since converted into e-commerce customers, Liu said.
Despite the frenzy, Liu said that JD has always played the long game of investing in supply chain and branded products. It plans to roll out its e-commerce platform in Europe in 2026, after three years of building infrastructure there. On its home turf, the company will challenge Meituan in another key market – hotel and flight bookings – offering a three-year membership programme that waives commissions for hotels.
Meituan founder Wang Xing was among the guests at a recent dinner Liu hosted for tech founders, the JD chief said. “I told him straight up, ‘bro, we are making a move into food delivery’.”
During Tuesday’s briefing, Liu portrayed China’s largest online retailer by revenue as the anti-PDD – one that focuses on high-quality products and disdains the model of cross-border shipping that underpinned the success of PDD’s bargain app Temu.
Liu has been vocal of late. The billionaire faded from the spotlight around 2018, when he was arrested in the US on suspicion of rape, though prosecutors ultimately declined to press charges. During Beijing’s crackdown on the tech sector in 2022, he joined a long list of tech founders who stepped down as chief executive officer.
CEO Sandy Xu – who previously served as the company’s finance head – will eventually take full leadership of JD’s domestic business, Liu said, which will free him up to steer an international expansion. BLOOMBERG
