Yihaodian () is a Chinese online grocery business founded by Gang Yu and Junling Liu in July 2008. Yihaodian is a business-to-consumer (B2C)

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manag ...

website that provides people with a platform to shop groceries online. Yihaodian has “virtual stores” that exhibit images of stocked grocery shelves on walls and other surfaces in urban public areas in China, which passersby can scan codes under the images with a mobile device to purchase corresponding groceries online. The retail giant

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

first invested in Yihaodian in 2011; in 2012, it announced additional investment so that Walmart controlled 51% of Yihaodian’s ownership. In July 2015, Walmart acquired 100% ownership of Yihaodian.

History

The two founders, Gang Yu and Junling Liu were both former executives at

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

before they established Yihaodian.com. Gang Yu was the vice-president of Worldwide Procurement, while Junling Liu was the president of

China. Besides that, before joining Dell, Gang Yu had also acted as the vice-president of Global Supply chain at

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

, and Junling Liu had been the vice-president at

Avaya Avaya Holdings Corp., often shortened to Avaya (), is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform inclu ...

China. Both of them accumulated rich experiences and management skills from their previous jobs. In 2007, Gang Yu and Junling Liu suddenly announced their resignation from Dell and began to prepare for their own business. In 2008, e-commerce market in China was dominated by e-commerce companies like Alibaba.com,

Taobao Taobao () is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it is the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba ...

and

Dangdang E-commerce China Dangdang Inc. (), known as Dangdang, is a Chinese electronic commerce company, founded by Peggy Yu and Li Guoqing in 1999. It is headquartered in Beijing and its main competitors are Amazon.cn (or Amazon China, formerly Joyo ...

. They seized domains in e-commerce respectively: Alibaba for "

business-to-business Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when: * A business is sourcing materials for their production process for output (e.g., a ...

", Taobao for " consumer-to-consumer" and Dangdang for " business-to-consumer". Gang Yu and Junling Liu accurately analyzed the situation of

in China and they eventually decided to develop the business-to-consumer (B2C) market by introducing a specialized category, "commodity", to the marketplace. Consequently, Yihaodian.com was launched in July 2008.

Merging

In May 2011, the retail giant

first invested in Yihaodian, with aims to integrate its logistics to Yihaodian's supply chain. In 2012, Walmart announced its further investment to Yihaodian under the approval of

Chinese Ministry of Commerce The Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China (MOFCOM) is a cabinet-level executive agency of the State Council of China. It is responsible for formulating policy on foreign trade, export and import regulations, foreign direct ...

, which had led Walmart became the biggest shareholder of Yihaodian (51.3% of shares). In In July 2015, Walmart announced full ownership of Yihaodian. On June 20, 2016, Walmart announced that it was selling its stake in Yihaodian to JD.com in exchange for a 5% stake in JD.com shares. The deal was valued at $1.5 billion.

References

{{Walmart Online retailers of China Chinese companies established in 2008 Retail companies established in 2008 Internet properties established in 2008 Online grocers Walmart