J&T EXPRESS

Jet Lee (Li Jie) was a senior executive at OPPO, the Chinese smartphone maker, where he built the distribution network across Indonesia. He saw firsthand that e-commerce in Southeast Asia was exploding but the delivery infrastructure was stuck in the past — slow, unreliable, and expensive.

In 2015, he left OPPO and founded J&T Express in Indonesia, leveraging his existing distribution knowledge and relationships. The timing was perfect: Shopee and Tokopedia were growing like crazy and needed a logistics partner who could actually deliver on time.

J&T Express is a logistics company focused on express delivery for e-commerce in Southeast Asia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East. They pick up packages from sellers, sort them through their hub network, and deliver to end consumers.

Revenue comes from per-package delivery fees paid by e-commerce platforms and individual merchants. They serve major platforms like Shopee, Tokopedia, and TikTok Shop.

Express delivery (next-day in key markets), Warehouse fulfillment, Cross-border shipping, Last-mile delivery, Merchant pickup service

Dominate Southeast Asian e-commerce logistics through speed and price, then expand to new markets. They entered China in 2020 (a bold move given the competition), expanded to Latin America and the Middle East in 2022-2023.

The strategy is to be the logistics backbone for Chinese cross-border e-commerce everywhere it goes — following TikTok Shop and Temu into new markets.

Brutal price wars with competitors like JNE, SiCepat, and Flash Express. Logistics in Southeast Asia is a race to the bottom on pricing, and margins are painfully thin.

J&T's expansion into China put them up against the established giants — ZTO, YTO, STO — who have decades of infrastructure advantage. The company also faced scrutiny over working conditions and driver compensation.

Hillhouse Capital, Boyu Capital, Sequoia Capital China, SB Investment Advisers (SoftBank), Tencent