The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2023
JD.com spent 8 years in SE Asia and never broke 1M users against Shopee's 31M
China's second-largest e-commerce company spent eight years building SE Asian shopping apps. It left with under a million users in each market.
JD.com · JD.id · 2023-03-31
What happened
JD.com entered Indonesia in 2015 and Thailand in 2017 through joint ventures — with Provident Capital in Jakarta, with Central Group in Bangkok. After eight years, JD.id had roughly one million active users. Shopee had 31 million in Indonesia alone; Tokopedia had 17 million.
In December 2022 the joint venture laid off 200 employees, about 30% of its workforce. On 31 January 2023, JD.com announced it would stop accepting orders on 15 February and shut all services by 31 March in Indonesia and 3 March in Thailand. The app was removed from Google Play and the App Store on the final day.
The retreat was part of a wider pullback. JD's 'new businesses' segment — which included overseas operations — generated only 2% of total revenue in Q3 2022. CEO Sandy Xu had called Q2 the most difficult quarter since the company's 2014 IPO. The company refocused on domestic supply chain and B2B logistics, the business where it already had scale.
Why it happened
- It entered late and never matched the subsidies Shopee, Lazada and Tokopedia used to acquire users — by the time JD arrived, the cash-burn war was already being fought by three well-funded rivals.
- JD's competitive edge in China — owning its logistics network — was diluted in SE Asia, where last-mile delivery was commoditised and riders worked for whoever paid the delivery fee that week.
- Consumers were shifting purchases to TikTok Shop and Instagram by 2022, so even the platform that won the subsidy war faced a challenger that was not a marketplace at all.
- The joint-venture structure meant decisions went through a local partner, slowing the kind of fast iteration that Shopee — wholly owned by Sea Ltd — used to overtake incumbents.
The lesson
A logistics advantage that works at home does not travel — if your edge is infrastructure you own, you cannot rent a cheaper version of it through a joint venture.
Aftermath
JD.com shifted its international strategy to supply-chain and B2B logistics partnerships. The Southeast Asian e-commerce market consolidated further: Shopee, Tokopedia and TikTok Shop accounted for the overwhelming majority of transactions by 2024.
Sources
- JD.id resmi tak beroperasi di Indonesia dan Thailand — Kontan
- China's JD.com to shut e-commerce sites in Indonesia, Thailand — Kontan English
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