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Dec. 17 (NBD) – Chinese tech giant Tencent has applied for a new trademark Tencent Logistics on November 21, a potential further deployment into China's logistics industry.

The trademark will be used for the logistics service offered for Tencent's teams and Tencent Logistics will integrate resources of third party logistics service providers such as S.F. Express, DHL and EMS, Tencent said to NBD.

The company said it has no logistics products or business team and doesn't plan to provide such service for any other party.

In fact, Tencent has made foray into the logistics field before the registration of the new trademark.

According to a report on investment of Chinese firms made during 2016 to August 2018, Tencent Industry Win-win Fund has invested JD Logistics, Uber-like truck service app Full Truck Alliance Group and fleet management company G7 and other delivery enterprises.

Last week, G7 stated it has landed 320 million U.S. dollars this October in its latest financing round with Tencent joining in.

Tencent was also among the investor list of city-wide freight service providers Kuaigou Dache.

Besides, the tech firm inked a strategic agreement with China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing in March this year to set up a series of industrial platforms based on Tencent's blockchain technology, such as the pharmaceutical cold chain traceability platform.

In June, Tencent launched a WeChat mini program Weipai, which utilizes Internet of things (IoT) technology, artificial intelligence and cloud computing to provide mobile services with man-machine interface, IoT scenarios and other intelligent services.

In addition, the Shenzhen-based company is reported to partner with S.F. Express to develop the optical character recognition technology by which the key information on tracking sheets can be quickly identified. Sinotrans, Deppon and other shipping companies have gained access to the technology.

Since the birth of the New Retail concept, Internet giants like Alibaba and JD.com have accelerated the integration of online and offline business so as to grasp more market shares. The logistics sector thus sees intense competition among big players.

As one of the titans, JD.com started operation of its logistics business under the brand JD Logistics in late November, 2016 and spun off the division into a separate unit in April, 2017.

JD Logistics now has six delivery networks respectively for small- and medium-sized packages, bulks, cold chain, B2B (business to business) and cross-border and crowdsourcing shipping.

The subsidiary finished its first financing round on February 14 this year securing up to 2.5 billion U.S. dollars, marking the largest amount in a single round of financing in domestic logistics industry. The unit was valued at 13.4 billion U.S. dollars after the deal.

JD.com's counterpart Alibaba aims to build a national intelligent logistics network. In addition to the investment in Cainiao Network Technology, it has invested in Ele.me, ZTO express, Best Express and other companies in the logistics market in the past three years.

Yin Junping, partner of Eastern Bell Venture Capital Management, pointed out that companies with Internet genes like JD.com, Amazon and even Meituan-Dianping may have the opportunity to beat S.F. Express, YTO Express and other delivery companies in the logistics field in the next decade.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn