JD Launches its First International Unmanned Store in Indonesia

China’s leading e-commerce platform JD.com opened its first overseas unmanned store, JD.ID X-Mart, an AI-powered experience store in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.

Located in a central shopping mall in the PIK Avenue in the capital of the Southeastern country, the 270-square meter retail space is the largest JD unmanned store to date. Customers can pick up the items they need and walk out of the store without getting slowed down by lines or payments.

The JD.ID X-Mart in Jakarta offers an expanded product selection, including fashion and apparel, as well as fast-moving consumer goods and beauty products.

JD.com launched the first unmanned convenience store in Beijing in October 2017. The unmanned stores leverage cutting-edge technologies, such as RFID, facial recognition, and image recognition, to track retail activities. Cameras placed throughout the space recognize customers’ movements and generate heat maps of the activities to monitor all shopping processes for store management optimization.

JD.ID X-Mart in Jakarta
JD.ID X-Mart in Jakarta

JD.com recently upgraded its unmanned store in Beijing to use advanced computer vision technology to track a range of shopping behaviors.

Last year, the Beijing-based e-commerce giant made a significant push in developing offline store technologies as part of its boundaryless retail vision – the idea that consumers should be able to buy whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want it – online or offline.

JD.com now operates over 20 unmanned stores across China. During its June 18 anniversary sales period this year, transaction volume for JD’s unmanned stores increased nearly 600 percent compared with the daily average.

The opening of the new store in Jakarta is key to JD’s “retail as a service” strategy – marking the first time that the Google-and-Walmart-backed e-commerce giant have tapped into an overseas market with its unmanned store technology. It also marks a new milestone for JD’s growth in Indonesia after launching its online shopping platform in the country in March 2016.

Currently, JD.com is selling more than 350,000 stock keeping units and serving 20 million consumers in Indonesia. It is supported by nine warehouses across seven islands covering 483 cities and 6,500 counties. With the plan to build more warehouses, JD is expecting 85 percent of its orders to be delivered the same or next day.