
Didi Kuaidi, Uber’s Rival in China, Has Raised $2B in Fresh Funding - gwallens
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/07/two-billionnnnnnnnn/
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bobjordan
I'm in China and my Chinese wife uses several of these apps but they are
battling pretty hard and she changes her app preference fairly regularly.
Currently she's alternating between "Yihao zhuan che"
([http://www.vvipone.com/](http://www.vvipone.com/)) and "Didi da che"
([http://www.xiaojukeji.com/](http://www.xiaojukeji.com/)). Yihao has several
different upgrades like "fast car" and "dedicated car" which can pay more for
quality. While Didi is more taxi grade and does car pooling with lower cost
options and delivery driver services. Didi is also doing a lot of promotions
like "free Mondays" which free is fairly bloodbath pricing.

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howlingfantods
Yihao Zhuan Che is actually owned by Didi And Kuaidi, but all three are
standalone apps. It's interesting how much internal cannibilization there is.

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contingencies
Didi is absolutely dominant in Kunming. Overnight (and I've been there 15
years) it became impossible to hail a cab, because all the cabs were servicing
Didi customers. Way to market your service ... if you aint on it, you aint
getting to where you need to be! I would say market penetration on a per-ride
basis was pushing 80%, and that was a year ago. Uber has no hope.

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pki
uber would have no hope in the first place being a foreign, non-chinese
company that relies on internet access to hosts not wholly controlled and
hosted in china

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sdm
Using Uber here in Suzhou, I'm pretty sure their China servers are completely
within China. There is no "bump" from transversing the GFW and starting such a
service in China without having the servers inside would be crazy. There is no
reason they couldn't just completely partition their service.

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studentrob
Has China blocked Uber and started fining, arresting or disappearing their
drivers yet?

Because that's what's going to happen, unless Uber has some well-positioned
backers from China

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bilbo0s
Well...

China likes to make things easy on their own startups. Everyone should know
that by now. If Uber has not made arrangements and structured the
administration and ownership of their China business in a fashion consistent
with that reality... I have to question the suitability of the leadership team
at Uber.

This is all basic stuff at this point. China is not a mystery anymore. You
shouldn't be getting the basic stuff wrong.

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jandrese
Even if Uber had greased the right palms before, they're still a foreign owned
country and at an inherent disadvantage in China. I expect them to be pushed
out the same way they were pushed out of Paris in the near future.

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emodendroket
That's a bogus analogy.

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kryptiskt
I can think of very few business ideas that need $2 billion+ worth of runway
before they are self-financing. It certainly seems it should be possible to
build a ride brokering service with a fraction of that.

But I assume they got it because they could and not because they needed it.

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mcintyre1994
According to the article they wanted $1.5b, but decided to leave it open for
another few hundred million because they could. As you do :)

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tcfunk
Not that this is constructive in any way, but I like the URL for this page :)

