Chinese retailing giant JD.com tests drone in rural areas

China’s online retailing giant JD.com has started conducting trial deliveries using drones, and plan to roll it out for delivery in rural China, the state media reported today.

The company said the unmanned aerial vehicles or drones will not deliver packages directly to shoppers but will instead help transport bundles of items from its distribution stations to 150,000 representatives mobilised across rural China who will then get them to shoppers.

The distance between distribution stations to rural representatives, usually less than 10 km according to JD, are more fixed for engineers to design drone itineraries and landing points. Representatives will be notified in advance to wait for drones to land with packages, Xinhua news agency reported.

JD.com’s CEO Richard Liu Qiangdong had said last year that the company is developing drone delivery to meet the rising retail demand in China’s rural areas, where complex terrain and underdeveloped infrastructure have compromised timely human courier delivery.

Both JD.com and its arch rival Alibaba have been working to unleash consumption demand from China’s 618 million rural residents, whose income growth has been outpacing their urban peers in recent years despite a slowing economy, the report said.