Tencent and JD.com

I'm back in town. Regarding Tencent and JD -- these two companies are really different. I'm not going to have a good perspective on the financial performance (you tell me), but I can tell you what I know about each of them. 

Tencent: 

Company is well-regarded in the tech space -- employees who come from this company tend to become founders of startups, high-ranking execs in other tech companies, etc. These guys got in early-on and capitalized on their dominance in QQ (a copy of ICQ) and turned it into a cash cow(?) by pushing gaming (both desktop, and now mobile). They also have a video portal (like youtube/hulu), and of course, are the creators of weChat. 

WeChat is Facebook for China, but it is only available on Mobile. Weibo (different company) is the Twitter of China. The default interface for WeChat (maybe I'll grab screenshots later) is WhatsApp/Facebook-messenger-like -- you see your 1:1 or 1:many conversations with your friends. But there is also the equivalent of a Facebook Feed, called "WeChat Moments". It looks basically like Facebook, although there are some small nuances: for example, comments are only available to first-degree friends (not friends of friends or public) -- this can create kind of a strange experience where the person who posts seems to replying to no one (since you might not be friends with those)... 

WeChat also has mobile payments locked down. They are one of the two major mobile payments platforms. Their (supposed) market entry strategy for mobile payments is really fascinating: they leveraged an existing social phenomenon of giving red envelopes around Chinese New Year, and basically created a seamless digital version of that. It's like how people in the US like to give people cards -- think if there was a cash value associated with that "thank you" / "happy birthday" card, and people were now delivering that via mobile phones. I'm sure they also seeded the market with a couple million dollars of free red envelopes, but it seems like a small price to pay given the dominance that they have now. The only two mainstream mobile payments platforms are WeChat and Alipay. 

JD.com 

From a consumer perspective, JD.com is like Amazon.com, except because they have such high density of population to work with in tier-1 cities like Beijing/Shanghai, they can offer same-day delivery on most of their owned & operated goods for free. They are best known for computers & electronics (called 3C here in Asia) because the little known fact is that the founder started out by selling blank burnable CDs (unverified). A side note is that when I arrived in China 18 months ago, I saw a lot of Amazon.cn buggies for delivery. Today, I basically see 1 a week if I'm lucky. Now mostly I see JD.com and YHD.com (a home-goods focused competitor). 

Consumers use JD.com because trust and authenticity can be a huge issue with e-commerce platforms, and fake-goods are rampant. For example, it's really hard to tell with Taobao (Alibaba) whether something you buy is real or fake, but on JD.com they offer more guarantees (whether those guarantees are worth anythings is TBD). In my discussions with some friends regarding Taobao vs. JD.com, my preliminary conclusion is that as people's incomes and spending rises, Taobao will basically be replaced by JD-like platforms where trust, authenticity, and quality are the focus. 

That being said, JD also has forays into some other things

• JD Finance which has a kickstarter-like component (see here for $300 headphones, or intelligent bike). Supposedly, the platform has been used for $164MM USD in fundraising to-date, with the highest item raising $5MM USD. They also have structured financial products (standard one offers 4.2% return), insurance (cars, health, accidents, travel), interest-free loans for buying products on jd.com, loans for SMBs, etc. 
• JD Export (it's in English! tell me what you think of it) -- which is where they're trying to sell to Russia / US / EU / AU from china. 
• JD Daojia O2O (online 2 offline) -- a mobile-only experience trying to be the aggregated "flower-deliver, takeout, car-wash, home-cleaning, etc" services platform. The O2O market has been ridiculously hot in recent months, but there is speculation that it is way overheated and getting ready for bubble-popping (like a recent car-wash company going out of business)