On Tuesday, leading e-commerce giant JD.com announced that its affiliated O2O business, JD Daojia, will merge with Dada, China’s largest crowdsourced logistics platform, to set up a new company.
According to the announcement, the new company will keep independently operating and developing their respective businesses. The two major businesses will be a crowdsourced logistics platform and an O2O platform for supermarket produce after the merger. JD.com will hold the largest stake (approximately 47.4%) in the new company, and the merger will be completed in the fourth quarter of this year. Philip Kuai, the CEO of Dada, and Zhijun Wang, the president of JD Daojia, will serve as the CEO and the president of the new company, respectively.
“Besides complementing each other’s businesses, JD Daojia and Dada also hold common enterprise values, which formed a premise for the two sides to reach a strategic merger,” said Richard Liu, CEO of JD.com. “This merger is an important step in building a sustainable O2O ecosystem. I believe that the new company will keep innovating to improve the quality of life for consumers throughout China.”
Founded in June 2014, Dada has been a leader in China’s crowdsourcing logistics industry. The company provides urban delivery services for fresh produce and goods from supermarket and convenience stores. It uses the crowdsourced delivery model, outsourcing delivery to people who register through their app, like the way Uber outsources driving. The company’s network covers 37 main cities in China, with 1.3 million part-time delivery staff and over one million daily deliveries.
JD Daojia, launched in April 2015, provides consumers with two-hour supermarket delivery and other life services through its location-based app. According to JD Daojia, its businss has expanded to 13 cities, with over three million users.
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