While Alibaba’s fintech affiliate Ant Group’s initial public offering—expected to be the biggest IPO ever at about USD 30 billion— has garnered much industry attention, Ant group is not the only fintech company looking at a market debut soon.
JD Digits, previously known as JD Finance, the fintech arm of JD.com and archrival of Alibaba, has also recently filed with China’s Nasdaq-like STAR Market, expecting to raise around RMB 20 billion (USD 2.93 billion).
For those who are not in the know, JD Digits introduced China’s first online consumer credit product Baitiao as early as 2014, one year before Ant Group launched Huabei in April 2015. However, thanks to the synergies among Ant Group’s products portfolio, Huabei became the largest product of its kind by credit balance, according to Oliver Wyman Research. Consumer credit services, including Huabei, also became one of the major revenue contributors to Ant Group.
Losing out to Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay on the consumer fintech front, JD Digits decided to shift its focus to serve businesses and enterprises. In 2018, the group announced that it would be devoted to building a business model of “Technology + Industry + Ecosystem”.
Under the new direction, JD Digits wants to be a digital solution provider who “uses data technology and the internet to help traditional industries operate with higher efficiency and lower cost,” according to its official site.
For example, in 2018, JD Digits put forward a “pig facial recognition” program as a part of its intelligent agriculture solution. By digitalizing all the farming processes throughout the life of a pig or cattle, industry practitioners can trace the statue of their livestock as well as reduce labor costs.
To know more about JD Digits, below are the main financial highlights of the firm’s prospectus:
