JD.com (9618) has started presales for the 618 shopping festival last night, three days ahead of Alibaba's (9988) Tmall, and launched a ''double price difference compensation" in a bid to compete for buyers.

If users discover a product within the "10-billion-yuan discount" program is priced higher than on other e-commerce platforms, they can make a request for JD to compensate double the amount of the price difference.

The "10-billion-yuan discount" program launched in March has featured over 200 highly sought-after items and around 100,000 bestsellers spanning all e-commerce platforms in the shopping gala, according to a blog entry of the Chinese e-commerce giant.

A direct discount pricing mechanism is introduced to eliminate confusion in coupon selection, said the company.

The mid-year shopping festival will officially run from May 31 until June 20.

This came as its rival Alibaba is reported to have cut about 7 percent of staff in the cloud division, according to mainland media The Paper.

The latest round of job cuts took place after giving bonuses at the end of April, which is an annual practice to "optimize job positions and manpower," said insiders of China's largest cloud service. The report is aligned with Alibaba Cloud's response that the layoff is a usual practice.

Bloomberg also reported that the company is offering severance to employees or transfers to other parts of the Alibaba empire, though those are not guaranteed, sources said. It is added that the moves are intended to streamline the business, which Alibaba aims to fully carve out into a separate company within a year.

JD.com is promising cheaper prices than its rivals. AFP

JD.com gets a head start on shopping festival