(Yicai) Sept. 13 -- Chinese e-commerce giant JD.Com has announced its fourth salary increase round in less than a year.

From October, JD.Com will start hiking the wages of employees at its retail and functional system departments until they will receive the equivalent of 20 monthly salaries a year in two years, the Beijing-based company announced on WeChat today.

In January, JD.Com doubled the annual fixed salaries of front-line workers and hiked those of retail staffers by no less than 20 percent. In February, it raised the average annual salary of more than 20,000 customer service employees by over 30 percent. In May, it increased the annual salaries of procurement and sales employees to 20 monthly payments from 16.

In addition to increasing salaries, JD.Com also improved its benefit packages for new hires. Earlier this month, the firm began hiring fresh graduates, offering them salaries 20 percent to 75 percent higher than before.

These moves are part of JD.Com’s strategy to address the competition from emerging e-commerce platforms, such as Pinduoduo. The company will implement stricter management policies and “lay off employees who lack fighting spirit,” Chairman Richard Liu said in May.

JD.Com’s new strategy has already borne fruits. In the second quarter of the year, its net profits soared 92 percent to CNY12.6 billion (USD1.8 billion) from a year earlier, compared with a growth rate of 14 percent in the first quarter. Revenue rose 1.2 percent to CNY291.4 billion (USD41 billion).

Editor: Futura Costaglione