
China's Didi Raises Over $5.5B in Record Tech Funding - sinak
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-28/china-s-didi-raises-over-5-5-billion-in-record-tech-funding
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ziszis
It is not a coincidence that Uber's competitors are all raising money at this
point in time. It was hard a year ago. Uber's struggles have not only boosted
the metrics for competitors [1], but there is increasingly a plausible story
about how Uber could fail.

1: [http://www.thedrive.com/tech/9739/lyft-bookings-ridership-
so...](http://www.thedrive.com/tech/9739/lyft-bookings-ridership-soar-as-uber-
deals-with-controversy)

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nullnilvoid
Didi is not Uber's competitor any more. Didi acquired Uber China, is an
investor in Uber, and owns Uber shares. So does Uber in Didi. They don't
compete directly in any major market at this moment.

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tyingq
They do compete by proxy, like in Brazil, where Didi invested $100m in "99".

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legolas2412
I guess we can say that Didi owns everything then...

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hkmurakami
Their pitch is probably "we will become the WeChat (transaction platform) for
all transportation and freight related needs"?

Would make sense considering their user base has already been trained to
expect a one stop shop ecosystem from an app, as opposed to Western markets
which expect siloed special purpose experiences.

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Markoff
except Didi is already incorporated in Wechat plus they have monopoly in
online car/taxi ordering, i don't think they can do anything about public
transport, air or train tickets, only other realistic thing would be buying
one of the bike sharing companies

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huangc10
> The round was said to have raised the four-year-old startup’s valuation to
> about $50 billion, up from a previous $34 billion after its acquisition of
> Uber’s China business.

Uber's valuation is ~$70 billion while Lyft's valuation is less than $10
billion. Therefore it seems like the two main players in ride-sharing will be
Uber and Didi for the next while.

I can see Didi branching towards other markets (outside of China) and directly
competing with Uber and Lyft. This will be interesting in the next while.

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Markoff
Chinese companies can't success abroad, because they win Chinese market with
help of government protecting them from competition

name one Chinese service/software company which would be major player outside
China

only partly successful companies are hardware companies like Huawei, Lenovo,
xiaomi or DJI thanks to their prices with some of them growing to different
segments over time

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matt_wulfeck
I'm seeing something right now. It's really, really difficult to figure out
what kind of crazy valuations people will put on companies. It's reinforced my
desire to own indexes all the more. I'll let buy a little of everything and
let the money managers battle it out.

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nodesocket
Can anybody in China comment on how popular Didi is? Is it as universal (young
to old people) and popular as Uber (don't want to hear the political
commentary). What about average ride price per KM (Renminbi or dollars)?

Seems like Apple's $1 billion investment last year (May) in Didi might pay off
huge.

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dilemma
Yes, Didi is universal across the country. You can order Didi through WeChat
and actually what you get is a regular taxi car, not a Uber-type freelance
driver.

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Markoff
you can choose if you want regular taxi or black car, it's up to you, you can
even choose shared car with other passengers

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codeisawesome
I just wondered for the first time: do these sorts of raises vacuum money away
into one large basket, instead of bets on many smaller startups? Could it be
zero-sum in a way?

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Denzel
The VC market expands and contracts like any other following the principles of
economics. Therefore, the fact that the production possibilities frontier (is
there a better term for a money market?) can move outward shows it is not
zero-sum. In simple terms, as time goes forward, more and more resources can
be created and injected into the market unlike a truly scare resource.

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chrischen
He said "zero-sum in a way" and that is true. At any given point in time it is
zero sum, and for practical purposes you can approximate it as zero sum.

To say that if i robbed all of silicon valley investors of their money and
claim it won't affect the funding prospects of new startups would be a lie.

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Denzel
Everything is zero-sum at an instant of time... I figured that was obvious
enough that I didn't have to say it.

If you want to approximate it as zero-sum, be my guest. It's a functionally
useless approximation.

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simplehuman
Wow, the CEO is only 33.

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LiweiZ
You can google who her father is. It's a capital and guanxi/connection game,
less about technology. Leveraging the direct/indirect capital resources they
own and copycatting SV unicorn tech fashion in a walled huge market make them
feel good. And they are really rich. It's their age now.

edit: added guanxi/connection

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fallmonkey
My failed attempt to find ANY information about his father somewhat proves
your theory, or google doesn't wanna tell me?

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praneshp
The President's father is Lenovo's founder. I don't know if the CEOs father is
a big shot.

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LiweiZ
I have to say it's a typical pattern for rich and connected kids in China to
gain success. Top local college => top us college => join GS or whatever
similar => trendy founder/CXO/etc. => Now it's their turn to have someone
write articles to let ordinary people know they are not just rich,
pretty/handsome, well-connected, but also they are super hard working,
smart/intelligent, wise to earn their crowns all by themselves. We all know
for well-connected in China, there are way more gates open to them. And the
stake-holders in the western world can help them open other gates. As I said
there is a long history of them doing all this kind of thing. Most people in
China with enough experience in that society know that.

It's just a capital-intensive pretend play. They are the players and you have
to watch them show off how good they played through mass media and your news
feed. If there was an earthquake in that circle, new batch of players would
show up.

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dominostars
Is that any different than how the USA works?

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LiweiZ
I forgot to mention the difference leaves different room for how much impact
other factors can contribute to the final outcome, which, in my opinion, is
more important.

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nullnilvoid
That is massive. That is even more than the 3.5B Uber raised in the last
round.

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tyingq
Does this signal that Didi will likely enter an existing Uber market?

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andromeda__
WTF! Who raises $5.5B at one go?

