BEIJING: China’s top taxi-hailing app backed by tech giants Alibaba and Tencent will raise at least US$1.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported yesterday, as the company gears up to take on Uber in the country’s expanding transportation market.
The amount values Xiaoju Kuaizhi, which runs the combined Didi and Kuadi apps, at US$12 billion to US$15 billion and the money will come from new and old investors, Bloomberg said, without elaborating.
The popularity of private-car booking enterprises such as Uber and China’s dominant taxi-hailing apps Kuaidi and Didi has soared in the country, where taxis are criticized for poor service and routinely ignore customers on the street.
Uber takers in China were making almost 1 million trips per day with business doubling in the last month, according to a leaked company e-mail reported last week by the Financial Times.
Uber plans to invest 7 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) in China during 2015, according to the e-mail.
Many cities in China are regulating the apps used for booking taxis, including barring them during peak traffic periods or banning drivers from using them while operating vehicles out of safety concerns.
