Chinese taxi apps backed by Alibaba and Tencent merge as competition heats up
Two of China's biggest taxi apps, backed seperatley by Alibaba and Tencent have merged as competition begins to heat up.
Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache completed the merger yesterday, according to Bloomberg, in a move that will create China’s biggest mobile platform for local transport, despite China's continuing crackdown on car-hailing apps including Uber- last month the country's Transportation Ministry banned private vehicles from acting as taxis.
“The merger is the result of strong desires from investors of both companies to stop bleeding from our cut-throat money-burning competition in the market,” Dexter Chuanwei Lu, Kuaidi’s chief executive officer, said in an internal memo which was posted on news platform Sina.com.
Kuaidi is backed by Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank Corp, and last month raised $600 million from investors including SoftBank, Alibaba and Tiger Global Management.
The merger follows the recent news that Baidu, the owner of China’s biggest search engine, agreed to buy a stake in Uber.