Lin Wang, senior director of finance at Asia-based e-commerce provider JD.com, and his colleagues have had a busy few years.
Backed by Tencent, JD.com – also known as Jingdong Mall – ranked third in the Global Corporate Venturing sector analysis with more than $1.3bn invested in 12 deals by syndicates of which it was a part, including rounds for food ordering service Ele.me and social media Douban, by a team including investment directors Linna Huang and Bruce Yang, who both joined last year.
It is a large amount, especially given JD.com floated in 2014 in the US, while its JD Finance subsidiary, created out of a company reorganisation the year before, raised $1bn in its second round at the start of this year.
The capital raisings by JD has encouraged its push into other deals. Recently, China-based last-mile delivery services provider Dada Nexus secured a $200m investment from e-commerce company JD.com and will merge with the latter’s logistics subsidiary JD Daojia. JD.com will own a 47.4% stake in the combined entity once the deal closes in the second quarter of this year. The merged company will continue to operate under the Dada Nexus brand as JD Daojia was launched in April 2015.
But JD’s sights are not limited to China. At the turn of the year it invested $55m in US-based shopping app Wish.