JD Health Releases 2021 Annual Results

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

JD Health released its 2021 financial year annual results on March 28th, the company’s second full-year earnings release after its listing on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (6618.HK) on Dec. 8, 2020. The company announced net revenue of RMB 30.68 billion yuan, an increase of 58.3% year on year. Profit (on a non-IFRS basis) was RMB 1.4 billion yuan, up by 91.5% YoY.

JD Health’s business maintained strong growth momentum in 2021, driven by a growing user base and improvements to the user experience.  On Dec. 21, 2021, annual active user accounts reached 123 million, representing a net addition of over 33.56 million from the 12-month period ended December 31, 2020. Additionally, its online medical consultation service grew rapidly, with its daily average consultations exceeding 190,000.

In his letter to shareholders, JD Health CEO Enlin Jin wrote that “over the past year, under the guidance of the relevant policies and regulations, and adhering to long-term value, JD Health consistently enhanced its capabilities by opening its ‘retail pharmacy + healthcare service’ ecosystem, helping the upstream, midstream and downstream entities in the industry in their digital transformation, and thus providing quality healthcare services to a wider group of people.”

In addition, “by offering professional supply chain and technology solutions, we served a growing number of local government departments and medical institutions, which accelerated the digital transformation of the healthcare industry and promoted the deeper integration and development of China’s digital and real economy,” Jin noted.

With the business philosophy of “based on trust and focusing on customer’s health”, JD Health is committed to improving inclusive healthcare for Chinese people at large while creating long-term and sustainable value for shareholders and the society.

According to the release, as of the end of 2021 JD Health has been leveraging 19 medicine warehouses and over 400 non-medicine warehouses across the country to realize next-day delivery of more than 80% of its self-operated medicines, and JD Pharmacy is able to deliver cold-chain pharmaceutical products in over 200 cities in China through its proprietary cold-chain logistics network.

JD Health continued to deepen collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi China, UCB China, Novartis and more, and became their first choice to release new medicines for online sales as well as a preferred partner to explore digital marketing innovations.

On the development of JD Health’s internet hospital, more than 45,000 doctors with the level of deputy chief physicians (second highest of medical professional title in China) and above have joined JD Health, and together collectively handled a daily average of more than 190,000 online consultations last year. Meanwhile, nine specialized medical centers for infection and liver diseases, brain nutrition, skin repair and more were established, bringing the overall number of specialized medical centers to 27 under JD Health’s internet hospital.

The “Family Doctor” telemedicine program continues to consolidate medical services and products’ resources and provide more diversified service scenarios to users, such as online video or audio consultations that support multiple users’ same time chat, service provision to grassroots communities and more.

In the past year, JD Health’s Rare Diseases Care Project and Fund have helped more than 24,000 patients acquire medications and healthcare services. And the company went full-force for the anti-COVID fight in different regions in China and natural disaster relief such as the flood in Henan province by donating medical supplies and offering voluntary health consultation services both online and offline.

Read the full report of JD Health’s annual results 2021 here.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JD Health to Promote Chinese Consumers’ Access to FSMP

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

JD Health has been expanding supplies and services on foods for special medical purposes (FSMP) to make them more accessible and affordable for Chinese consumers via the internet, said Ye Yang, general manager of the nutrition and healthcare department of JD Health during a webcast discussion on the topic of FSMP’s innovations and role in promoting health in China held by People’s Daily in Beijing on March 13th.

FSMP are intended to provide nutritional support to people who suffer from a specific disease, disorder or a medical condition, as a part of their dietary management. In recent years, Chinese policies such as the National Nutrition Plan (2017-2030) have put forward clear requirements for promoting FSMP and its application standards. It has also drawn increasing attention among the larger public, especially because of its value for the elderly, infants, pregnant women and patients who have special nutrition needs.

JD Health is China’s online channel that offers the most comprehensive FSMP categories, with 41 products available for online sales so far that have been approved on the Chinese market and are suitable for home use.

Nutrition-related content on JD Health’s online hospital

JD Health’s data shows that 92 percent of users wished to receive professional guidance on healthcare advice and product usage when they look for FSMP products online. Thus an “Ask a Doctor” tab is embedded in JD’s products’ pages where users can directly interact with doctors or nutritionists to get real-time support. Users can also go to the dedicated portal of the nutrition department under JD Health’s online hospital for more comprehensive knowledge and consultations.

JD Health launched customized Family Doctor telemedicine service for FSMP users

Last October, JD Health introduced seven customized Family Doctor services for FSMP users, focusing on providing personalized telemedicine services for allergy-prone infants, malnourished infants, patients after tumor surgeries, and more special groups of users.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JD.com Launches Cargo Flights from China to Brazil and Germany

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com has launched two charter cargo flights from China to Brazil and Germany on March 17 and 19 respectively. Since 2021, the company has consecutively launched cargo flights from China to Thailand, the US, the UK, Brazil and Germany, connecting sellers and buyers from the continents of Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America.

Serving as the first cargo flight of JD.com from China to Latin America, the route between Hong Kong International Airport and Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil will be operated twice a week by Angola Airlines. The inaugural flight carried a variety of e-commerce goods from China such as FMCG products, sports equipment, digital accessories and more. Local goods were shipped to China on the return trip, facilitating the fast-growing cross-border trade in the two regions.

The route between Xinzheng International Airport in Zhengzhou, Henan province and Cologne Bonn Airport, the second largest airport in Germany, is scheduled three times a week by Capital Airlines of China, and will be transporting mainly e-commerce goods including apparel, cosmetics, digital accessories, furniture and more for export and milk powder, food and auto parts for import. The inaugural flight also transported COVID-19 rapid test kits manufactured in China.

Except for supporting the cross-border transportation between China and Germany, the Zhengzhou – Cologne route will set Cologne as a hub and cover major European cities including Frankfurt, Brussels, Liege, Amsterdam, London and Paris. The company’s self-owned overseas warehouses in Germany, Poland, the UK, the Netherlands and France will be connected to provide integrated supply chain solutions.

According to JD Logistics’ first annual financial report, the company had nearly 80 bonded and overseas warehouses by the end of 2021. Its global supply chain network reaches over 220 countries and regions.

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

TORY BURCH Opens Flagship Store on JD.com

Posted on by Xiaoqian Han

by Xiaoqian Han

The Tory Burch flagship store opened on JD.com on March 22, offering consumers a wide assortment of collections, including ready-to-wear, handbags, shoes, and accessories.

Three styles of the brand’s iconic Kira bag in denim were first released on this store, and the new spring/ summer collections of Tory Burch featured by supermodel Liu Wen also became available at the same time.

New spring/ summer collections featured by  Liu Wen
Tory Burch iconic Kira bag

Founded in 2004 in New York City, Tory Burch is an American luxury brand known for beautiful, timeless pieces and rich storytelling that evokes optimism and joy.

“We are thrilled for the launch of our official flagship store on JD.com. It created a unique opportunity for us to expand our reach to our fans and new customers on JD.com. We look forward to offering the bespoke shopping experience and introducing Tory Burch’s colorful world to everyone,” said Paolo Zullo, SVP, General Manager, Tory Burch China.

To date, JD has gathered more than 300 flagship stores of major fashion and lifestyle brands, covering jewelry, clothing, luggage, shoes, and home furnishing. Tory Burch’s flagship store on JD.com will enable consumers with more options to shop for fashion items online.

 

(hanxiaoqian3@jd.com)

A Major Achievement: Super Deep Learning Model by JD Explore Academy

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

A super deep learning model, ViTAEv2, which was jointly proposed by JD Explore Academy and the University of Sydney, Australia, was recently ranked top in accuracy of image classification on ImageNet ReaL without using extra training data.

With larger scale, better results and better adaptability to various vision tasks, the model with 600 million parameters set a world record of 91.2 percent accuracy in February in the field of image classification technology by not using extra training data.

The ViTAEv2 model adopts a “pre-training and fine-tuning” paradigm to make a breakthrough in model architecture and training paradigm, which fully uses the effectiveness of inductive bias in large-scale models, as well as pre-training and migration learning algorithms that fit the structure of the model to achieve the target results.

JD Explore Academy also developed the few-shot learning capability of the large-scale ViTAEv2 model by fine-tuning the large-scale ViTAEv2 model with 1, 10 and 100 percent of the data respectively, and the result showed that when fine-tuned with only a small amount of data, namely 10 percent, the large-scale model significantly outperformed the smaller scale model which was using all the data. “It further confirmed that the large-scale model has a strong ability in few-shot learning, which indicates that the super deep model has strong representation ability, learning ability and sample efficiency,” said a deep learning scientist from JD Explore Academy.

The ViTAEv2 model’s ability to help solve challenging tasks with low or even zero resources was fully validated, as well as its ability to reduce data annotation costs, accelerate algorithm development cycles, simplify model deployment, empower and facilitate the R&D and implementation of next-generation automated learning technologies.

As the largest public dataset for image classification, the ImageNet dataset has attracted the attention and participation of top international technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook, as well as leading research universities such as Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and National University of Singapore especially in terms of the accuracy ranking list. Its data metrics are widely recognized as an important criterion to measure the level of computer vision technology.

The performance of the ViTAEv2 model helped JD Explore Academy take its computer vision models to a new level, and is expected to continue to push forward the development of a range of vision tasks, such as semantic segmentation, object detection, pose estimation, and video object segmentation.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)

A Volunteer–Turned-Entrepreneur Pledges to Make a Difference with JD Pet

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

In 2015, Zhu Changlin volunteered for a stray animal rescue event, and was shocked by the scene. “Seeing thousands of stray cats and dogs, many of which were disabled, I had an indescribable feeling in my heart at that time,” Zhu said. He and the other volunteers bought pet food and supplies online at their own expense to help the stray animals as much as possible.

Since then, the seed has been planted deeply in his heart to help pets live a better life.

In 2017, after two years of research and preparation, Zhu set up his pet food brand KERES with the concept of “scientific pet care and specialized food for different pets”, and started a close cooperation with JD Pet.

In the early days of the business, Zhu realized the poor reviews of the Top 100 pet food brands on e-commerce platforms were focused on two major issues. The first is that “pets do not want to eat”, which accounted for about 30 percent; and the second is that “no change is seen after eating the pet food”.

Zhu saw business opportunities in both of these issues. He believed rather than simply feeding pets, a scientific and nutritious feeding system must be introduced. As a result, Zhu decided to lead his company to develop precise nutritious food for pets at every stage of growth from multiple dimensions of nutrition ratio, process technology, food safety and health management.

KERES’ concept coincided with that of JD Pet, which had launched the “high quality certification for pet food”, and “JD platform’s standard of complete pet food with high quality” that is even higher than the international standard. JD Pet also provides a number of special services for pet owners, including “return and refund if your pets don’t like the food, clothes or toys.”

Although the return and refund policy brought a cost pressure for KERES, it has also led to a majority of the brand’s customers purchasing the brand continuously. As of October 2021, KERES had served total of 6 million pet-owning families, reaching an annual revenue of RMB 600 million yuan.

With support of JD Pet, KERES launched 21 pet food products, which have also been highly recognized by consumers. In 2021, the company achieved significant growth in the whole category of products on JD’s platform, with total annual sales increasing by 60 percent year-on-year. It also ranked No.1 in terms of sales of pet food, awarded “Good Store of the Year” by JD Pet.

In the future, KERES will continue to improve products and upgrade services together with JD Pet, develop a full range of quality products with pet food as the core, and create a better life for pets with love, Zhu said.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)

JD.com Data: Sales Boom for Agricultural Products in the Mid-Spring

Posted on by Xiaoqian Han

by Xiaoqian Han

Online shopping in rural areas has increased rapidly on JD.com in recent years. Before the spring equinox of 2022, which falls on March 20 this year, “green consumption” such as agricultural products, gardening and plants increased significantly. Recently, JD’s Consumption and Industry Development Institute released a report featuring analysis on green consumption.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the report:

  • Online consumption of agricultural products has grown significantly.
  • Compound fertilizer turnover increased by more than 10 times year-on-year.
  • Consumption of agricultural technology services increased by more than 10 times.
  • The generations born after 1985 (post-85s) and 1975 (post-75s) are the largest consumer groups of agricultural supplies and gardening, contributing 32 percent of online sales. Post-85s choose to buy fertilizers, animal feed, flowers, and plants; post-75s like to buy gardening supplies and seeds.

Physical Products consumption

Since the beginning of spring on February 4 , 2022, the online transaction volume of JD.com’s agricultural products, plants and other green consumption has increased by more than 40 percent year-on-year (YoY), and the turnover of fertilizers and gardening has increased by 317 percent and 247 percent YoY.

In the category of agricultural products, the transaction value of compound fertilizers climbed by more than 10 times YoY. The volume of nematicides and agricultural machinery sold increased by more than 6 times YoY.

In addition to the consumer demand for agricultural products in rural areas, urban consumers’ demand for plants is also increasing. The turnover of mini-scale landscape plants increased by more than 9 times YoY and the volume of large-scale landscape plants and gardening tools increased by more than 150 percent YoY.

Service products consumption

The transaction value of agricultural technology services increased by more than 10 times YoY, and the volume of gardening services increased by 247 percent YoY. Before the spring equinox in 2022, the proportion of agricultural technology consumption services in county-level rural areas increased by 20 percent, and the proportion of transaction volume rose from 62 percent to 82 percent.

The consumption proportion of gardening services in cities is higher than that in rural counties, and nearly 60 percent of the consumption of gardening services occur in cities. Consumers from urban areas represented by big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou prefer to buy gardening supplies, flowers and plants. The consumers in rural areas of the county level prefer to buy animal feed, breeding tools and veterinary prescription drugs.

From the perspective of consumption characteristics in different regions, Eastern China has the highest growth in the market share of online agricultural products. Consumers in Eastern China prefer to buy fertilizers, flowers and plants, and gardening supplies; Northeastern China’s consumers prefer to buy animal feed, farming tools, and veterinary prescription drugs; consumers in Northern China prefer to buy feed, veterinary prescription drugs, and gardening supplies.

Consumer demographics

In the online market for agricultural products, the post-85s and post-75s are the largest consumer groups, contributing 32 percent of the online transaction volume. Compared with the consumption proportion of all age groups, the consumption proportion of the user group over 46 years old in agricultural products is significantly higher than the consumption proportion of all categories. In contrast, the post-85s prefer to buy fertilizers, animal feed, flowers and plants; the post-75s prefer to buy gardening supplies and seeds.

Differing from traditional e-commerce, JD.com is a new entity enterprise that offers digital technology and capabilities, regulates upstream merchants and connects consumers with quality in order to promote rural revitalization, and drives more farmers to become financially successful.

 

（hanxiaoqian3@jd.com）

JD and Sinopec to Build Digital Supply Chain Model Aiming Broad Partnership

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

by Yuchuan Wang

The Anhui province branch of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) inked a partnership with JD.com on March 15, in which the two parties will cooperate on a series of supply chain services and promote omni-channel business.

The agreement covers smart logistics, warehousing facility sharing, product supply chain and digital supply chain. JD will leverage its advantages in supply chain services and technology to help Sinopec Anhui increase efficiency and lower cost. The two companies plan to turn Sinopec’s 1,400 Easy Joy convenience stores into JD.com’s pick-up stations, further expanding the online and offline consumption scenarios.

At the same time, JD and Sinopec will explore retail store operation, B2B and business procurement, joint marketing and auto-market product supply, so on and so forth, based on the Easy Joy convenience store. Business opportunities in the area of digital membership, digital transformation and digital operations will also be explored.

In the future, JD and Sinopec are expected to deal with more consumption scenarios and models to realize the digital transformation of gas stations.

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)