Walmart CEO Doug McMillon and New Dada CEO Philip Kuai image credit : Walmart

Chinese online grocery delivery firm Dada-JD Daojia has nabbed $500 million in funding from U.S. retail and e-commerce company Walmart and Chinese e-commerce giant JD in a strategic investment deal for 2 year old Dada.

The online grocery startup was formed from a merger between JD’s Daojia online-to-offline e-commerce service and online crowdsourcing logistics services New Dada in a $200 million deal hence the combined name Dada-JD Daojia marking another strategic partnership between Walmart and JD which acquired its Chinese e-commerce venture Yihaodian 2 years ago.

Walmart is a strategic partner of Dada which claims over 100,000 retail stores with its signature one-hour delivery time for various types of items. The service also counts 10 million daily deliveries and 20 million monthly users as of current.

“The future of global retail is boundaryless. There will be no separation between online and offline shopping, only greater convenience, quality and selection to consumers. JD was an early investor in Dada-JD Daojia, and continues its support, because we believe that its innovations will be an important part of realizing that vision,” said Jianwen Liao, Chief Strategy Officer of JD.com, in a statement.

JD counts this investment as part of its ‘Borderless Retail’ which includes the merging of e-commerce with physical sales, staff-less stores and several other innovative strategies aimed at the Chinese online-to-offline retail market.

 Walmart previously invested in New Dada before its merger with the U.S. retailer then taking a $50 million strategic stake in the Chinese on-demand logistics and grocery O2O ecommerce platform.

With the opening of its first small high-tech supermarket in China early this year, The U.S. retailer continues to make more efforts in tapping into the e-commerce markets outside U.S. regions making several moves which includes its $16 Billion majority acquisition of Indian e-commerce company Flipkart May this year among several other efforts.

In order to compete with Amazon in the already huge and still rapidly growing e-commerce market, Walmart will have to gain good market share in other regions outside the U.S. still open to more competition in addition to taking market share in the U.S. region dominated by the e-commerce giant Amazon.

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