JD founder cautions logistics business must tighten belt

Alibaba's arch-foe JD.com has long prided itself on owning and controlling its logistics services: couriers are treated as in-house staff and paid a basic income. In an internal letter sent to the staff on Monday, JD founder and chief executive Richard Liu said the company will scrap basic salary for couriers as net loss amounted to 2.8 billion yuan ($420 million) in 2018 at JD's logistics unit. "The main reason is we had too few orders externally and too high a cost internally," said Liu.