JD and Go-Jek deepen their relationship to conquer Indonesia

JD Indonesia business development manager Eyvette Tang onstage at Tech in Asia Jakarta 2018 / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Ecommerce giant JD is betting big on Indonesia – both in terms of making venture investments, where it has backed local unicorns Go-Jek and Traveloka, and expanding its own brand visibility.

The Chinese firm selected the island country to host the first overseas outlet of its line of tech-laden cashierless stores – named JD.id X.

It later used Jakarta’s public transport system as the testbed for a new mode of online shopping: virtual “shelves” that allow passers-by to order products while they wait for a train. The company is calling it JD Virtual.

It’s next move is partnering with Go-Jek to accept a broader range of payments, and forming other potential synergies.

Since launching its Indonesian website in 2015, JD has “tapped into about 25 million” regular users, said Eyvette Tung, JD.id business development manager, onstage at Tech in Asia Jakarta 2018.

Though it’s a fast-growing market in ecommerce, people are still accustomed to buying offline.

Giving a peek into JD’s flagship staffless store in Jakarta, Tung explained that it uses three key technologies to create the “cashierless” experience and track retail activity in-store: AI, image recognition, and radio frequency identification (RFID).

With the JD app, users can generate a QR code which they scan at a turnstile to gain entry to the store. Facial recognition tech provides an identification double-check and facilitates payment at the end of the shopping trip. Products carry RFID tags that allow the store to calculate the shopper’s final bill and keep track of in-store movement.

“The customer enters a checkout terminal where their face is scanned to ID them, and the shopping they’ve done is tallied up,” Tung said.

The store has attracted about 20,000 visitors since opening its doors in August, she added. However, it can only accept credit card payments at the moment – something which leaves a huge swathe of Jakarta’s cardless population out of the equation.

Tung confirmed that JD is working with Go-Jek’s Go-Pay unit to bring other cashless payments methods into the fold. It’s also aiming to introduce “ready-to-eat food” items in the staffless stores.

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A JD Virtual banner in Jakarta. / Photo credit: JD

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