Tencent Holdings Ltd, an Internet conglomerate that challenges Alibaba on almost every front, recently acquired a 15 percent stake in JD. That deal will help JD gain access to hundreds of millions of users via Tencent's mobile messaging apps WeChat and QQ, an area that's Alibaba's Achilles' heel.

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But both companies have similar corporate governance, with certain rules helping a small group maintain a tight grip on company controls, said Hong Bo, founder of IT portal IT5G. "In the case of JD, founder Liu is able to maintain veto power while holding a minority stake," he said.

According to an arrangement detailed in the prospectus, the board of directors can't vote on anything unless Liu is present.

At Alibaba, a group of founders and senior executives retain the right to nominate board members, despite owning a smaller percentage of company shares, he noted.

Hong said that either arrangement is unlikely to have a negative impact on the companies' market valuations, since Nasdaq accepts dual-class shareholding structures. In addition, the appetite for Chinese technology stocks has recovered after a series of accounting scandals.

But The Wall Street Journal cited a recent survey of 54 global investors, two-thirds of whom said they would apply a discount to Alibaba's shares to account for the insiders' nomination rights, with an average discount of 19 percent.

JD said it expected to raise about $1.5 billion via the IPO, with pricing due on Wednesday.