Central Group teams with Chinese firms in Thai joint ventures
Central Group, Chinese retailer JD.com and Chinese fintech company JD Finance on Friday announced an aggregate investment of up to $500 million to establish two joint ventures in Thailand covering e-commerce and fintech services.
Half of the investment will come from Central Group, with the remainder coming from JD.com, JD Finance and Provident Capital, which is JD.com’s strategic partner for its Indonesian e-commerce business.
Central Group will contribute its extensive retail resources, including the physical stores, as key omni-channel and payment locations, its brand and merchant relationships, as well as insights into consumer behaviour gleaned from its customer loyalty programme “The 1 Card” .
Central Group will open multiple stores of its omnichannel businesses on the new joint e-commerce platform.
JD.com will provide expertise in technology, e-commerce and logistics to the e-commerce joint venture, while the fintech joint venture will benefit from JD Finance’s knowledge in the financial-technology sector, including its experience in building services in developing markets using artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other technologies.
“JD’s proven track record of successfully building out national online retail businesses made it the obvious choice for our e-commerce partner,” said Central Group chief executive Tos Chirathivat.
