(Yicai Global) Aug. 6 -- Yonghui Superstores has promoted the man in charge of the Chinese supermarket chain’s technology to chief executive in a bid to speed up its digital transformation as the firm pushes to join up online and offline retail.

Li Songfeng replaces Li Guo, who resigned, the Fuzhou-based company said in a statement late yesterday. Li Guo will stay on as a director as well as chairman of the firm’s supply chain management subsidiary.

Li Songfeng, 44, joined Yonghui in January after nearly 10 years at Chinese e-commerce giant JD.Com, where he rose to become a senior group director. He was deeply involved in JD’s technology building and mobile internet transition.

With 20 years of technical and managerial experience, Li specializes in building digital capabilities that are suitable for corporate development in business transformation, Yonghui said. Since joining Yonghui, he has given a strong impetus to the company’s tech capabilities and capacity-building for digital operations.

In recent years, Yonghui has been working to shift from a traditional supermarket player into the area of New Retail -- merged online and bricks-and-mortar commerce -- and has secured funding from JD and internet giant Tencent Holdings. As of June, JD owned about 13 percent, making it the second-largest shareholder after Dairy Farm International Holdings.

Shares of Yonghui Superstores [SHA: 601933] slipped 1.2 percent today to CNY4.02 (62 US cents). The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended down 0.2 percent.

Editor: Peter Thomas