According to the source, as part of the alliance, Tencent would inject its online shopping operations in return for a 6%stake in China-based JD.com. The partnership would combine JD.com’s market, which sells products from electronics to fashion, with Tencent’s e-commerce platform. For JD.com, the 272 million users on Tencent’s WeChat messaging service could upgrade the traffic to its online store.
In January 2014, JD.com filed an IPO to raise USD 1.5 billion. Online retailing in China more than doubled each year from 2003 to 2011 and is projected to more than triple to USD 395 billion by 2015, according to a McKinsey & Co. report.
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