In an effort to strengthen the competition against Uber Technologies globally, Didi Chuxing (formerly known as Didi Kuaidi), China’s largest taxi hailing service, has invested an undisclosed amount in India’s leading taxi aggregator Ola.
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Didi Kuaidi have not disclosed the scale of investment, part of Ola’s latest round of fundraising, though Times of India quoted the sum as being close to $30 million.
Also investing in Ola’s new round are SoftBank, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Tiger Global, and Falcon Edge.
The partnership between the two companies could also probably take the form of the deal between Didi Kuaidi and Lyft, which will allow users of one platform to access the services of the other provider when traveling in each other’s turf.
Uber’s three most popular cities are all in China, but leaked financial documents indicate that the company is spending a lot more money than it is recouping on each ride. TOI was the first to report about Didi Kuaidi’s investment in Ola in its September 19 edition.
With seven million completed orders daily, Didi claims to have 99 per cent marketshare in Chinese taxi-hailing space and 82 per cent in the private car-hailing industry. “We look forward to exchange learnings from two of the world’s largest markets and the tremendous synergies this partnership can bring, towards our commitment of building mobility for a billions of Indians”, an Ola spokesperson said.
Ola has previously consolidated its business by acquiring a smaller Indian rival TaxiForSure for $200 million.
Ola now holds an 80% share of India’s ride-hailing market, with 320,000 vehicles in more than 100 cities offering over 750,000 rides each day, Didi said in a statement. And it is looking to partner with local champions such as Ola which whom they can share best practices and technology for operational expertise and product development.
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Incidentally, SoftBank is a common investor in both these companies.
