History Of JD.ID: Chinese Tycoon E-Commerce Business From Becoming A Unicorn To Permanently Closed In Indonesia

JD.ID logo, an e-commerce tycoon from China owned by Liu Qiangdong (Richard Liu) (photo: doc. ANTARA)

JAKARTA - The struggle of a tycoon from China, Liu Qiangdong (Richard Liu) achieves success full of twists and turns. The business he initiated often failed. From the food business to electronics. The presence of cases of the acute respiratory syndrome (SARS virus) that hit China is one of the reasons.

He didn't give up. The Sars virus actually inspired him to change his business focus from offline to online. JD.com was born. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) business is a big profit. JD.com also invaded the Southeast Asian market. Indonesia, mainly. The business was then named JD.ID.

There is no businessman whose way of starting a business is smooth. That is what Richard Liu agreed to when he started to determine his life path as a businessman. He, who had just graduated from college, became interested in the food business.

The business is thought to bring abundant profits. Moreover, food is the most common need in life. Far from the fire. The real food business ended in failure.

Not because it didn't sell well, but because he was betrayed by his men who took away the sales profits. This failure did not necessarily discourage Richard Liu. He began to perpetuate other businesses. The field of electronics became his choice in 1998.

Portrait of a Chinese tycoon, Liu Qiangdong (Richard Liu). (Wikimedia Commons)

He founded his first electronics store called Jingdong Century Trading (JD) in Zhongguancun, Beijing. The products he sells revolve around magneto-optical, then develop into selling other electronic goods. From cell phones to computers.

The business was selling well. In fact, Richard Liu was able to open dozens of his shop branches. However, his business fell to its lowest point, aka bankruptcy in 2002. The SARS Virus epidemic that hit China was the cause. Bankruptcy in fact can not kill his spirit.

Then the SARS epidemic inspired him to change the direction of the business that used to be traditional towards the e-commerce business in 2004. He founded a buying and selling site, jdlaser.com, then changed to 360buy.com in 2007. Finally JD.com in March 2013.

“Online orders were increasing at a faster rate, so he decided to try his luck at e-commerce and, in January 2004, he opened JD Multimedia Network and shifted his business focus from offline to online. After JD moved to e-commerce, his business sold a lot of household appliances at first. In November 2005, JD Multimedia Network was able to process more than 500 orders per day.”

“At that time the logistics system was arranged in several places. From Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The logistics system is to expand online sales to cover the entire country. In June 2007, JD Multimedia Network officially renamed JD Shopping Mall, launched a new domain name, 360.com (later changed to JD.com in 2013), and successfully restored it,” said R. Xiao and X. Zhang in the book New Media and China's Social Development (2017).

JD.ID Present in Indonesia

JD.com was a huge success in China. The success of JD.com inspired Richard Liu to expand his business to Southeast Asia. Indonesia, which is known as one of the world's largest markets for online systems, is also being looked at. The JD Multimedia Network e-commerce business was officially operational in October 2015 in Indonesia.

Instead of continuing to use the JD.com domain, the selected site address conforms to the country-code top-level domain Indonesia (.id), JD.ID. The products sold were initially dominated by electronic products.

Gradually, the products being sold began to diversify. From clothes to beauty products. The general public is also enthusiastic about the presence of JD.ID. They get a new option where to shop online for groceries.

At its peak, JD.ID also shined in 2019. Richard Liu's business has succeeded in obtaining unicorn status in Indonesia. Unicorn is a term for a technology company that has a value of more than 1 billion US dollars. However, this success was not followed a few years later. JD.ID will officially stop doing business in Indonesia in 2022. They will close all of their services on March 31, 2023.

"JD.ID is listed as the sixth startup company in Indonesia that has successfully penetrated a unicorn valuation or business value of US$1 billion -- following several other popular names, such as Gojek, Tokopedia, Traveloka, Bukalapak, and Ovo. When they opened their business in Indonesia in November 2015, JD.ID directly dealt with a number of e-commerce players with a large market base, such as Shopee, Blibli, and Lazada.”

“JD.ID's business, which offers electronics, fresh food, and JD.com hobby-like goods, has grown rapidly since then. In February 2019, JD.ID was included in the first phase of Gojek's series F funding, which first became a unicorn. The capital round was initiated by a number of large investors, such as Google and Tencent. There is also capital from large ventures, such as Mitsubishi. Corporation and Provident Capital which support JD.ID's business trip," said Riani Sanusi Putri and Yohanes Paskalis in their article in Koran Tempo entitled End of JD.ID After Efficiency (2023).