World Record Investment and Free Rides

1 min read July 17, 2015

Mobile transport in China is very lucrative market. There are a wide range of apps and services available at our fingertips and the competition is fiercer than ever. Didi Kuaidi and Uber are the biggest ones trying to serve the increasing personal transport needs of Chinese users and the heat of their rivalry is constantly increasing.

Recently, San Francisco-based Uber announced that the Chinese market is the top priority of their global team and they are planning to invest an additional $1 billion into their China operations. Meanwhile, Didi Kuaidi, China’s biggest taxi hailing company have raised $2 billion from their investors and their cash reserves have reached $3.5 billion. Their recent fundraising transaction is the biggest capital injection ever received by a non-public company in the internet industry. They even managed to exceed Airbnb Inc’s and Facebook’s fundraising records, which were both $1.5 billion.

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Since their merger in February, Didi Kuaidi is in a very special situation. They are backed by both Tencent and Alibaba, China’s biggest internet companies, who are in competition on many fronts but united their efforts on the mobile transport market.

According to the president of Didi Kuaidi, Jean Liu, the latest round of fundraising will help to maintain their leading position of the mobile transport market and will also contribute to the expenses of their R&D and marketing activities. As part of their new promotional efforts the company launched the Orange Monday’s campaign, in which they provided free rides in 338 Chinese cities. (Watch out for free rides next monday!)

The company’s rather ambitious mission is to create a mobile transport ecosystem and to be able to serve 30 million passengers a day, while ensuring that users can hitch a ride within 3 minutes anywhere in the country.

Sources:

http://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-gaming/article/1834497/chinese-car-hailing-app-didi-kuaidi-earns-record-us2-billion
http://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/1838294/didi-kuaidi-offers-free-rides-338-chinese-cities-following-record
http://technode.com/2015/07/08/didi-kuaidi-confirms-record-2b-usd-funding-and-theyre-not-done-yet
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/08/us-china-didikuaidi-idUSKCN0PI…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-ride-hailing-startup-raises-2-billion-1436326552

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