BusinessE-commerce logisticsFormula racesWhen it comes to delivery, Chinese tech titans take divergent routesIn 2019 RICHARD LIU told couriers working for JD.com thatthe Chinese e-commerce giant he founded would cancel their base pay after a 2.8bn yuan ($438m) loss the previous year, its 12th consecutive one in the red.Riders would make only a commission on deliveries.If the company did not cut back on spending, Mr Liu warned, it would go bust in two years.Far from collapsing, two years on JD Logistics, JD.com’s delivery division, is on a roll, fuelled by a boom in Chinese e-commerce.Its parent company’s revenues jumped by 39%, year on year, in the first quarter, to 203bn yuan.On May 26th Pinduoduo, an upstart rival that also offers customers delivery by JD Logistics couriers,reported quarterly sales of 22bn yuan, 239% higher than a year ago.The State Post Bureau expects logistics companies to deliver more than 100bn parcels this year, twice as many as in 2018.
