JD.com Upgrades and Rebrands JD Finance to JD Digits
JD.com, 11/20/18
Chinese B2C e-commerce and online finance giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) today announced a major upgrade and rebranding of its JD Finance business to JD Digits (formally Beijing Jingdong Digital Technology Co., Ltd.) The newly restructured unit will work towards integrating advanced digital technologies across not only fintech, but also four other sectors including urban computing, agriculture, campus services and digital marketing.
Speaking at the 2018 JD Discovery Conference in Beijing on November 20, Chen Shengqiang, CEO of JD Digits, outlined the company's plans: "While fintech continues to be the core business of the company, we are intensely developing digital technology to serve a wider range of industries. From this perspective, the business expansion will follow our main principle which means that data-related business remains our primary focus."
Over the past five years, JD Digits has become a global leader in terms of its data processing capabilities and implementation of advanced data technology, with AI and IoT among the company's core strengths. JD Digits' data technology output includes its core capabilities on data warehousing, data mining, visual analysis, alongside other data-related functions. The company's AI innovations have been adopted in many applications such as in facial recognition systems, biological probes, deep learning, graph computing, and in the use of RNN time-series algorithms. JD Digits has also seen its IoT technology applied to many kinds of products and solutions, through sensing technology, video surveillance, radio frequency identification technology, and information encryption, among several other technological developments.
JD Digits has established six labs in both China and the United States, including the Silicon Valley AI Lab, the Intelligent Risk Control Lab, the JD Super Brain Lab, the Block Chain Lab, the Scenario Data Integration Lab, and the JD Intelligent Cities Research Center. Up to 95 percent of its business is operated with automated and intelligent technologies.
Since being established in 2013, the strong data technology capacity of JD Digits has served over 400 mln individual customers, including 8 mln online and offline merchants, and more than 700 financial institutions, while also helping serve 12,000 start-ups and innovative companies.
JD Digits has been recently expanding the reach of its business beyond the financial sector and announced the launch of the JD Agriculture and Husbandry Academic Research program on Nov. 20.
In the field of agriculture, JD Digits is pioneering a new solution called the JD Stockbreeding Intelligent Solution which features fully-applied AI, IoT, robots and edge computing to digitalize traditional agriculture practices, helping reduce farmers' costs while improving agricultural efficiency.
This solution has been successfully introduced to the pig-breeding industry, where it has practically proven to decrease costs by between 30 to 50 percent, reducing the amount of fodder required by up to 10 percent and shortening the slaughter time to 5-8 days. As a result, the solution has effectively lowered costs in the pig-breeding industry by up to RMB 50 bln.
For city development, JD Digits provides an urban computing platform to fully support the construction of intelligent cities with customized intelligence solutions to benefit the environment, transportation, energy consumption, healthcare and a host of other sectors. For instance, through the use of AI technology, the urban computing platform can optimize the city's emergency response stations, helping emergency responders and ambulances shorten the time stuck in traffic by up to 30 percent, which means more lives can be saved. The platform can also improve the efficiency of a city's energy consumption by 0.5 percent, effectively reducing billions of dollars in costs per year.
Chen Shengqiang added that digital technology should be used as a tool which draws upon the existing knowledge to implement big data and technological resources to realize a truly digital economy. As a new and fast-developing industry, digital technology -- which integrates industries with cutting-edge technologies -- can promote industries' development through the internet, digitalization and intellectualization, so as to ultimately reduce production costs, improve the user experience, increase industrial revenues, and upgrade industrial models.
JD Digits also announced the launch of the JDD-2018 Global Digitalization Challenge, a worldwide competition which will attract top technology talents who have a deep understanding of the industry. The competition, which got officially underway after being announced at the JD Discovery Conference on Nov. 20, is divided into four regional sectors: mainland China, Hong Kong, the U.S. and Israel. Champions from each region will be selected to participate in the final round in Beijing, where winners will be eligible to win cash awards as well as earn potential employment opportunities with JD Digits.
About JD Digits
JD Digits was formerly known as JD Finance until it was comprehensively upgraded and rebranded in November 2018. Its operational purpose is to connect finance and real industry by using digital technology, boosting the influence of the Internet, enhancing the digital and intelligent development of industries, foster the development of the real economy and create greater social value.
With its leading technologies and expertise in big data, AI, IoT and blockchain, JD Digits has been involved in many fields, from finance, urban computing, agriculture, campus services and digital marketing. In the future, JD Digits will enter into more real industry sectors and will more deeply explore current business patterns and developing trends.
JD Finance will continue to operate as an independent sub-brand of JD Digits, and integrate digital finance-related businesses within the company.
Keywords: JD Digits Internet Chen Shengqiang JD.com JD JD Finance financial services
Sending
