JD.com in China is reportedly the country’s biggest online and overall retailer with the greatest revenue among all internet companies. It is also widely known as the closest competitor and direct rival of Alibaba, which is another big name in the list of top Chinese retailers and e-commerce businesses.

Recently, JD’s logistics division has confirmed raising 1.5 billion Yuan, which converts to about $218 million, to make investments in logistics-related and similar companies.

When asked about the partners in this funding, it was informed that both JD.com and JD Logistics are involved along with other external government and listed companies, the names of which haven’t been shared publically.

“Several listed companies and government-led funds,” the company’s representative shared, but declined to provide further details or elaborate on this line.

In an interview with TechCrunch, the company’s spokesperson said that the funds raised will be used to make Yuan investments in smart supply chain technology and logistics innovation.

JD Logistics officially became a separate subsidiary of JD.com back in April 2017. While the unit still has a long way to go, it was able to gather a Yuan fund investment equaling $2.5 billion from different investors in 2018, including Tencent, Sequoia Capital, and Hillhouse Capital Group for investment.

However, Richard Liu, the CEO of JD.com, passed an internal memo that disclosed that JB Logistics will implement effective measures for cost-cutting in the wake of the huge loss of 2.8 billion Yuan in the previous year.

The cost-cutting measures included riding free of basic salaries for its postmen and paying them based on the number of packages they deliver.

Alibaba Cainiao is the direct competitor of JD Logistics that generated ‘hidden’ funding amounting to $7.7 billion in the year 2016. JD.com’s nature of business mandates deliveries that are cost-effective, as the company itself owns the inventory that is transported. The unit provides delivery services for both in-house packages as well as third parties.

The Yuan investment fund will counterpart the investment of JD.com itself that casts different deals in diversified sectors, said Jiemian, a Chinese news website.

During a roundtable press conference in June, the head of planning and development of JD Logistics named Bing Fu announced that an initial public offering (IPO) was planned for JD, but there was no clear timeline for it.