China’s top taxi-hailing app Didi Kuaidi (滴滴快的) yesterday announced it raised US$2 billion in two weeks, after reports said US rival Uber Technologies Inc planned to invest US$1.1 billion in the country this year.
Didi Kuaidi, which is backed by technology giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) and calls itself the world’s largest one-stop mobile-based transportation network, said its fund-raising attracted “tremendous interest” from global investors.
It is looking to raise “a further few hundred million dollars” from new investors in the coming month, it added.
“The fact that global investors are eager to participate in this fund-raising round shows their confidence in the development of our company,” CEO and chairman Cheng Wei (程維) said in a statement.
The popularity of private car booking enterprises such as Didi Kuaidi and San Francisco-based Uber has soared in China, where traditional taxis are criticized for poor service with rude drivers who routinely ignore customers on the street.
For now, the Chinese firm dominates the market, but the two are locked in a fierce battle for customers, offering both riders and drivers subsidies and discounts that are costing the companies vast sums.
Uber, which launched operations in China last year, said in a message to investors last month that it planned to invest 7 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) in China, the Financial Times reported previously.
Uber riders were making almost 1 million trips per day, with business doubling in the previous month, CEO Travis Kalanick said, adding that the company plans to add 50 cities from the current 11 into its operational network.
However, Cheng was confident that the Didi Kuaidi’s “clear competitive advantages” built “through its integrated platform, technology and team” would see it win out.
“Didi Kuaidi is in a far better position to benefit from this tremendous opportunity than any other player in the mobile transportation industry in the world,” he said.
Didi Kuaidi plans to use the capital raised to strengthen its market position, develop new services, improve technology and data research and enhance the user experience, the statement said.
Didi Kuaidi’s private car services fulfill 3 million rides daily and data from research firm Analysys International showed it commands 80 percent of the market, the statement said.
For taxi-hailing, the company holds 99 percent of the market, also with 3 million daily trips, it said.
The company aims to serve more than 30 million passengers and 10 million drivers per day in three years’ time and ensure every passenger gets a ride within three minutes of request anywhere in China, it added.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
RSS