Dada Group Founder Departs, JD Retail CEO Takes Over as Board Chairman
Dada Group, China’s leading local on-demand delivery and retail platform, on August 22 released its unaudited results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2022 and announced changes to certain executive positions and its board composition.
The company has confirmed the resignation of its founder Philip Kuai as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Meanwhile, the board has named Jeff He as its new president, to be responsible for daily operation management and reporting to the board. Furthermore, JD Retail’s CEO Xin Lijun was appointed as a director of the company and will succeed Kuai as chairman of the board, while Kuai will be engaged in investment and providing startup guidance.
According to the announcement, Kuai himself said that he had made full preparations for the succession plan as Dada matures. He also affirmed Jeff He’s contribution to Dada Group: “In the past eight years, Jeff’s critical contribution to our tremendous growth in the past eight years and deepened collaboration with JD has demonstrated his strategy execution and leadership capabilities and won the trust and support from the team and the board.”
Dada was launched in 2014, mainly engaged in logistics crowdsourcing business and providing intra-city delivery services. In April 2016, JD.com announced that it would merge its O2O subsidiary “JDDJ” with Dada. On June 5, 2020, Dada was listed on the Nasdaq. According to its prospectus, JD.com holds 47.4% of Dada’s shares. In February of this year, JD.com became the largest shareholder of Dada, with 52% of its shares.
Since its listing, Dada has maintained rapid and steady development. In the 12 months ending June 30, 2022, the total transaction volume (GMV) of JDDJ was 54.6 billion yuan ($7.97 billion), up 69% year-on-year, and the number of annual active consumers reached 72.8 million.
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In the second quarter of 2022, the total net revenue of Dada Group was 2.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 55%. Net revenues generated from Dada Now and JDDJ were 815.6 million yuan and 1,465 million yuan respectively in the second quarter of 2022.
Its net loss was 578.8 million yuan, compared with 640.4 million yuan in the same period of 2021. For the third quarter of 2022, Dada expects total revenue to be between 2.35 billion yuan and 2.45 billion yuan, representing year-on-year growth of 39% to 45%.
