Didi Kuaidi confirms investment in Uber Indian rival

Didi joins existing investors in Ola including SoftBank, Falcon Edge, Tiger Global Management, and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.

China’s most popular ride-hailing app Didi Kuaidi said on Monday it has invested in Indian peer Ola, forging a new alliance within a network of companies challenging U.S. rival Uber Technologies Inc. The move is clearly part of a global effort to fight back advances by Uber, with Didi previously inking deals with Southeast Asia’s GrabTaxi and U.S.-based Lyft. A dominant player with 80 per cent share in India’s taxi-hailing business, Ola claims to be doing over 750,000 rides per day through a network of 320,000 cars across more than 100 cities. On the other hand, DiDi is Uber most visible competitor in China.

The Chinese firm said in a statement that it believes both India and China are rapidly developing countries with enormous market potentials.

Ola recently announced a $754 million expansion to boost its presence in India. A Didi spokesperson declined to reveal the investment size.

Didi Kuaidi said in the statement that it operates a comprehensive transportation service for over 200 million Chinese users ranging from private car-hailing, chauffeur service, Hitch (social ridesharing service), bus and taxi-hailing.

Ola has set an ambitious target of reaching one million drivers on its platform in three years. And it is looking to partner with local champions such as Ola which whom they can share best practices and technology for operational expertise and product development. “We look forward to exchange learnings from two of the world’s largest markets and the tremendous synergies this partnership can bring, towards our commitment of building mobility for a billions of Indians”.

In April this year, Ola had raised United States dollars 400 million (about Rs 2,500 crore) from a clutch of investors led by DST Global.