
Beleaguered Didi Is Said to Lose $585M in Just Six Months - raleighm
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-07/beleaguered-didi-is-said-to-lose-585-million-in-just-six-months
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ceohockey60
Some additional context to the #deleteDidi online campaign and the death of 2
passengers, which was missing in the article but important in understanding
Didi struggle, not just financially, but with its product and culture: the
victims were using the low-cost product inside Didi (akin to UberX) that
somehow allows drivers to see would-be passengers' photos and in order to
"increase engagement." The driver who murdered the most recent victim has been
reported by other passengers for suspicious/inappropriate behaviors before,
but was not taken off the platform. This victim just happens to be an
attractive flight attendant. This is all to say the product culture within
Didi is not just cut-throat and competitive, but borderline amoral--driving
growth and engagement at all cost, literally at the expense of their
customers.

~~~
shawn
I don’t understand this argument. Murderers will find ways to murder people.
If that’s their goal, then that’s their goal. So why is Didi related at all to
the bad behavior of a few outliers?

You’re far more likely to die on the highway or being robbed.

~~~
flente
It is Didi's responsibility to police their platform. If the offending drivers
had already been reported multiple times and Didi had not taken action, it
clearly indicates passenger safety was not high on their list of concerns.

If you are a predator, bring a driver affords you all kinds of opportunities
to prey you people that you otherwise would not have. How often are you going
to find a young woman walking in a dark park by herself late at night? Compare
that to how easy it is to pick one up as an Didi/Uber driver.

At the end of the day, a ride sharing company's users literally entrust their
lives to the company. It is the responsibility of the company to act on a way
worthy of that trust. If they don't, it is definitely a reasonable response to
#deleteDidi.

~~~
djsumdog
As much as I'm against the Uber corporate culture, which seems to be pretty
similarly reflected here in this particular Chinese counterpart; so devils
advocate here: it's probably not easy to police a huge pool of contract
drivers.

I mean if anything, it's more an argument that ride-share companies should vet
their drivers, do basic background checks .. you know, treat them as real
employees instead of this "gig economy" bullshit.

Even then, you're still going to get a psycho in the mix, but at least you can
say you attempted to do due diligence.

~~~
Tyrek
it's not easy to policy a pool of drivers, but that's not my concern as a
consumer - that's on you to figure out your business model - if you've lost
the consumer confidence, that's a direct threat to your business, not just a
'whoops I tried my best I promise I'll do better'

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larrysalibra
Didi significantly reduced subsidies after Uber left the market - in Shenzhen
at least this means prices aren't any better than taxis. It's _usually_ faster
to get a taxi in most places and times of the day than waiting the 3-5 minutes
for your Didi to arrive. Back when it was a lot cheaper to Didi, people would
wait a couple minutes to save 50%, but if the price is the same, they take
what's faster.

On top of this there's additional competition from the huge numbers of people
using bike sharing like Mobike or Ofo - which not only taking a bike much
cheaper, but it's often faster because you avoid traffic jams.

Amazing how much the market has changed in such a short time.

~~~
half0wl
Slightly related - it's the same situation in Singapore when GrabTaxi "merged"
with Uber.

After Uber pulled out, Grab stopped handing out promotion codes that would
save you anywhere from $2-5 bucks per trip (or occasionally more), and they
slashed the rate you earn reward points for every dollar spent by ~13-16
times.

Grab became the market, quite literally. It's such a drastic change in just a
matter of weeks, and what makes it worse is that there is practically no
competition in the ride-hailing scene over here (for now, at least, and
hopefully).

~~~
inawarminister
Gojek haven't tried to penetrate the SG market huh?

They're fighting Grab in Thailand and Philippines for now I think.

~~~
half0wl
They confirmed they're launching in SG a couple of months back, but there has
been no further news yet :-/

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galuggus
There's a lot of vc money floating around China(lots of nouveau riche people +
limited ways to invest). This means a lot of competition. Unlike Uber Didi has
a lot of competition. Consumers will use whichever service discounts rides the
most.

Recently didi has seen a few new, well funded competitors and coincidentally a
rash of negative PR.

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oblio
I get the impression that ride-hailing is the new file storage or image upload
business of our days: tempting but inherently not a valid business model.

~~~
tootie
I have lived in NYC since long before Uber and co were on the scene. I used to
call a car service switchboard and give them my location and destination and
they'd have a car there in 5-10 minutes max. They'd bring a car seat if I
asked. The driver would get my number and call me if he was stuck or couldn't
find me. Price was reasonable, drivers were pros. It was literally just one
lady answering a phone. And now Uber/Lyft/Didi are employing like 10,000
highly-paid developers and providing a marginally better level of service. The
biggest value-add by far is that they have a consistent name and brand that
can provides drivers anywhere instead of having to pick a car service off of
yelp. It's mind-boggling how over-engineered these businesses are in order to
justify their status in Silicon Valley.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
The fact that Uber has several of orders of magnitude more users, and that
there cultural shift has been so great that cities around the world are
struggling with how to regulate ride hailing services, suggests that there is
something a bit more than "consistent name and brand" that is driving users in
droves to these services where they _didn 't_ use your "one lady answering a
phone" service.

~~~
ritchiea
The original comment has a point about not raising the quality of service in
NYC but the consistency of Uber across states and even countries is a huge
value add. I have been able to quickly get a car in less populated areas of
the USA than NYC or SF (the suburbs of Portland, Maine for instance) without
having to guess at or research the quality of local car services.

I have requested Ubers in almost a dozen different countries and been able to
easily get a car without worrying about language barriers or being pressured
into increased tourist prices. I actually deleted Uber due to the concerns
about their company culture and ended up re-downloading their app because it's
so helpful for international travel.

~~~
djsumdog
Hmm .. maybe an option in this startup space is a unified app for existing
taxi and limo services? You see Taxis in every city with adverts on the side
saying "Download our app." You can support local taxis if you want, but it
takes that effort and no one does it.

The last time I was in Berlin, Uber drivers were required to be taxi
operators. The Uber app just hailed a taxi driver, so there was no real
difference in getting a Uber vs hailing a cab.

Instead of each Taxi company trying to stay on top with their own individual
apps (which are probably made by like 3 US companies who sell/rebrand their
services to everyone), why not an app system that connects you to local Taxi
services?

Support your local Taxi company. Put in your destination and get a list of
rates and estimated wait times from companies .. you could put fancy Limo
companies right next to the Taxis in the rare case someone wants to pay some
crazy amount for a limo (or so they can use the same app to book one for a big
engagement/later time).

Is there anyone in this space?

~~~
nradov
Flywheel

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usaar333
As an aside, I just got back from China and found Didi, at least as a tourist,
to have really improved in the past couple years.

Accepts foreign CCs, very good English translation in app, and text based
translation to communicate with drivers.

And quite inexpensive; Shanghai at least charges similar distance costs as
Lyft and one third the time cost.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
How does it work when the didi driver calls you to ask where you are (given
the poor state of urban mapping)? This was extremely common in Beijing a
couple of years ago, and I only got by because my Chinese was st the taxi
level (able to tel them where I am and give simple directions). A foreigner
using didi without any Chinese skills would be completely helpless in that
context.

~~~
usaar333
It's changed a lot since I used it (and Uber China -
[https://medium.com/@usaar33/using-uber-in-china-a-case-
study...](https://medium.com/@usaar33/using-uber-in-china-a-case-study-of-
missing-product-details-bb0e2afeeb3)) two years ago.

They now have a txt message system that should be relied on:

1\. It has translation built in.

2\. It has pre-canned responses

In practice, with #2, the most common pre-canned response you give is "follow
navigation" and my drivers tended to just respond with the pre-canned "ok".
Drivers don't call me -- their app even tells them I'm not using a Chinese
language app.

Never had any trouble.

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bogomipz
>“We have to ask some hard questions: does Didi have core values, are we only
a company that focuses on interests and ignores safety and social
responsibilities,”

I wish this tired "asking hard questions" trope would stop. I think this maybe
started with Zuckerberg. It's nothing more than a rhetorical device. It allows
CEOs to acknowledge a PR problem without having to provide any meaningful or
prescriptive guidance to the culture that created that PR problem in the first
place. You will never read a blog post by a CEO titled "The Answers To Those
Hard Questions."

>"Cheng said in an email, according to people who’ve seen the memo and
verified its authenticity. “The problem is within ourselves. Our desire for
success caused us to forget our mission."

Ugh. When success and your mission can have such orthogonality, it could be
argued that your "mission statement" was disingenuous to begin with.

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moron4hire
These companies should hire me as their CEO. I'll lose them only 1/10th of the
money over 10 times the amount of time. That's 100 times better performance.

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CameronBanga
They'll be a unicorn like Uber in no time at this pace!

~~~
cosmon0t
what's the name for a company that can spend and lose a billion dollars before
they see a dime in returns?

~~~
bonestamp2
A Panda. By all laws of nature they should no longer exist, but due to human
intervention, they do.

~~~
CydeWeys
Huh? Pandas were doing just fine until humans came along and destroyed most of
their natural environment. You've got it backwards. See:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2rmf6h/til_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2rmf6h/til_that_part_of_the_reason_it_is_so_hard_to_get/cnhjokr/)

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naveen99
wasn't this part of their plan ?

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fifnir
and that's how you learn new words ! :)

(I spent a few seconds considering if Beleaguered is a first name...)

~~~
macintux
Apple spent about 15 years being regularly referred to as "beleaguered" so
it's somehow apropos that the ride sharing service they invested in has
inherited the mantle.

