Chinese online retailer JD.com files for $1.5B U.S. IPO

JD.com Inc. (formerly 360Buy), one of the largest online retailers in China, just filed with SEC for an IPO to raise up to $1.5 billion in the U.S..

The company started as a business-to-customer e-commerce service in 2004 and then introduced third-party retailers in October 2010. Its business model, selling goods directly to users and taking commissions from third-party retailers, is different from that of Alibaba, Taobao, and Tmall, whose major revenue sources are search marketing and other advertising offerings.

The gross merchandise volume (GMV) on JD’s platform was RMB32.7 billion and RMB73.3 billion in 2011 and 2012, respectively.  The GMV is RMB86.4 billion ($14.1 billion) in  the first nine months of 2013. The company didn’t turn a profit from 2009 to the second quarter of 2013. It managed to make $10 million in profit in the third quarter.

The company is well known in China for its self-supported delivery service. It has 82 warehouses in 34 Chinese cities; 1,453 delivery stations and 209 pickup stations in 460 cities;  and 18,005 delivery men, 8,283 warehouse staff and 4,842 customer service personnel, as of December 31, 2013, according to the company. The delivery system handled 211.7 million orders in the first nine months of 2013.

JD.com as of the third quarter of 2013

The company refers to itself as ”the largest online direct sales company in China in terms of transaction volume … with a market share in China of 45 percent in the third quarter of 2013,” citing iResearch reports.

JD.com has received a huge amount of funding — roughly $191 million — in four rounds.

This story originally appeared on TechNode. Copyright 2014