Ride hailing startup seems to be the most promising startup in the world. Not just Uber, Lyft or Southeast Asia giants like Grab and Gojek, China has it too. It’s called DiDi.
A unique combination of Tencent and Alibaba investment for DiDi
Cheng Wei, a former Alibaba worker, found it difficult to hail taxis. Often losing his plane, he founded Didi Dache in 2012 as a taxi hailing app. The app then grew to allow customers to reserve taxi a day earlier. The same year, the startup received a back up by Tencent at $15 million.
Meanwhile, Wei’s company had a big rival, Kuaidi Dache that was backed up by Alibaba. Interestingly, the two companies decided to merge up as Didi Kuaidi at 2015 and rebranding itself as DiDi at 2017. And at the first fund raising after merging, it raised $2.5 billion. Both Tencent and Alibaba are still the main investor for the company.
With the giant backups, DiDi soon eliminated its competitor. After the initial launching in 2013, Uber China reported a $2 billion loss. In 2016, the Chinese company acquired Uber.
But the Chinese startup has not finished yet with Uber. It then boosted $2 billion for Grab, which later used by Grab to acquire Uber in Southeast Asia.
Going international
DiDi secured a lot of partnerships in order to go international. For instance, it’s with Taxify in Europe. While in Middle East and Africa, it has Careem as its partner. Furthermore, $6 billion investment from Softbank helped the startup open its services in Japan.
But it seems like DiDi needs to get tensed up. Both of its backup doing things behind its back. Tencent and Alibaba, with Chinese car maker companies are holding hands. They reportedly put a $1.5 billion together to make another ride hailing company operating in China.
If the plan goes on, it would be a very big threat for the company. It really needs to secure more markets faster. As it seems more likely that this Tencent and Alibaba collaboration grow dangerously big.
