The operator of one of China’s leading taxi-booking apps, Kuaidi Dache (快的打車), has raised US$600 million for expansion, a statement said yesterday, even as the Chinese government tightens control over such services.
Heavyweight investors in the latest round of financing for Travice Inc included Japan’s Softbank Corp, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and investment firm Tiger Global Management, the joint statement said.
Investment in taxi and car-booking apps has become a proxy war among China’s Internet giants. Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), operator of the popular messaging app WeChat and a rival of Alibaba, has invested in another Chinese company, Didi Dache (滴滴打車).
Meanwhile, Chinese search engine Baidu Inc (百度) last month bought a stake in Uber Technologies Inc, as the US firm seeks to expand in China.
Kuaidi Dache, based in the eastern city of Hangzhou, claims 200 million users in more than 300 Chinese cities and calls on a fleet of more than 1 million vehicles, according to the statement.
Consultancy Analysys International estimated in November last year that Kuaidi Dache has a 54.4 percent market share in China.
The government has allowed these types of booking apps, but recently banned their use for summoning private vehicles, state media have reported.
Many cities are even regulating their use for taxis, including barring such apps during peak traffic periods or banning drivers from using them while operating vehicles out of safety concerns.
Booking apps have also contributed to a wave of taxi strikes across the country in recent days, including the northeastern city of Shenyang, as well as Jinan and Nanjing in eastern China, Xinhua news agency reported.
Taxi drivers say their business has been hurt by competition from booking apps used for private cars and vehicles from auto rental firms.
The Chinese Ministry of Transport said last week that it would monitor the situation.
“Various kinds of ‘specialized car’ software companies should respect the rules of the transport market, [and] take responsibility to prohibit private cars from entering and operating on the platform,” a media report posted on the ministry’s Web site said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day