Amid competition from Alibaba and Amazon, Chinese online retail firm JD.com has led an investment in Vietnamese eCommerce firm Tiki.vn, Business of Fashion reported.
JD.com co-led the financing round with Vietnamese entertainment and social media firm VNG Corp, which is an existing investor, the eCommerce company said in a statement on Tuesday. While JD.com did not disclose dollar amounts for the deal, the company said it will become one of Tiki’s largest shareholders — along with VNG.
The Tiki.vn deal isn’t JD.com’s only recent investment. In December, the company joined a $863 million funding round for apparel platform Vipshop with Tencent Holdings. JD invested $259 million for a stake of 5.5 percent, adding to a previously held, undisclosed stake of roughly 2.5 percent.
In addition, JD.com announced a partnership with Chinese internet search company Baidu. Through the deal, users looking for products online will be sent by Baidu to JD.com.
According to a report in Bloomberg, under terms of the deal, users who are looking for product information on Baidu’s mobile search app will be able to access a section in which they can purchase products right from JD.com. Baidu gets to keep users within the app and also gets its hand of valuable data about what its customers like and don’t like.
The move on the part of Baidu and JD.com comes at a time when the leading eCommerce company in China, Alibaba, is using its vast digital information on consumers to drive an offline-online retail strategy.
Alibaba and JD.com track sales across China that can spill to over $17 billion in just one day. As a result, the two companies have a lot of data on consumer spending, which they can analyze.
JD.com produces a slew of indexes, ranging from focusing on liquor purchases to what and how many appliances are selling. Meanwhile, Alibaba, the dominant online marketplace in China, has announced plans to publish its own line of indexes.
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