Chinese taxi-booking app Didi Dache raises $700m
Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, DST Global and Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings have led a new round of funding worth $700 million for Didi Dache, a Chinese taxi-booking app.
The company claims this is the single biggest investment in China's mobile internet sector. It did not disclose what the size of the deal indicates Didi is now worth.
Early this year, Didi reportedly received up to $100 million in a Series C round of funding from CITIC Private Equity and Tencent. Last year, the domestic internet giant committed $15 million to the company, while GSR Ventures contributed $3 million in an earlier round.
Founded in 2012, Didi connects prospective passengers with vacant taxis. It integrates with Tencent's instant-message app WeChat to allow users to book taxis from inside the app. In August, the company launched Didi Black to target high-end customers.
Didi claims to have over 100 million registered users and more than one million taxi drivers on its platform. Its services cover 300 cities and the company processes 5.2 million orders per day. The Didi Black service now covers 16 major cities, with daily orders surpassing 150,000.
Its main rival is Kuaidi Dache, which is backed by Alibaba Group and allows passengers to make payments through Alipay. According to a report from Analysys International, 154 million people in China used a taxi-booking app in the third quarter this year, with the vast majority of orders going to Kuadi and Didi.
Wei Cheng, Didi's founder and CEO, said in a statement that the firm will expand its mobile-based transportation services to reach more users, strengthen market leadership, and intensify R&D to enrich product offerings.
VCs and strategic investors are pumping money into online and mobile-enabled taxi services.
Earlier this month, US-based Uber raised another $1.2 billion in funding, some of which will be used to expand in Asia. Last week, Japan's SoftBank Corp. committed $250 million to GrabTaxi, becoming the largest investor in the Southeast Asia-focused platform. The deal followed a $210 million Series D round for India-based taxi-booking app Ola.
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