JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce site, has agreed to invest HK$1.3 billion ($171million) for a 10% stake in Kingdee International Software Group, as the e-commerce powerhouse forays into software businesses.
JD.com purchased shares of Hong Kong-listed Kingdee at HK$ 4.60 each, an almost 10% discount to Kingdee’s closing price of HK$5.11 on Friday.
The two also signed a strategic agreement to provide cloud-based business software to small-and medium-sized firms. “We plan to develop a strategic partnership under which Kingdee would leverage JD.com’s proprietary technology that we have developed for our own operations for their ERP(enterprise resource planning) solutions,”says JD.com spokesperson JoshGartner.
It on April 22 signed a deal to make its software available on Amazon Web Services. Also the company has has tied up with leading Chinese drugmaker Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding Co Ltd to develop its online healthcare business, the drugmaker said in a filing on Monday.
The move reflects a growing rivalry between Chinese e-commerce firms over China's fast-growing online healthcare market, with technology seen as a potential cure for a sector that is bogged down by high prices, snarling hospital queues and frequent allegations of corruption.
Larger rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said it joined forces with U.S. drugmaker Merck & Co Inc last week to explore developing online health services such as warehousing logistics and health data analysis.
