China’s Didi, India’s Ola join forces to compete with US’ Uber
December 4, 2015, 7:04 am

The pact will allow users of these ridesharing apps to seamlessly travel across India, China, the US and Southeast Asia [Xinhua]

The pact will allow users of these ridesharing apps to seamlessly travel across India, China, the US and Southeast Asia.

China’s Didi Kuadi and India’s Ola will now look to jointly compete with US-based Uber. Uber is backed by investment bank Goldman Sachs and operates in over 60 countries.

The new Asian alliance will cover nearly all of Southeast Asia, India, China and the US, reaching nearly 50 per cent of the world’s population, a joint statement of Didi, Ola and GrabTaxi said.

Joint partner products will start rolling out in the January-March 2016 quarter, it added.

China’s Didi is also an investor in Ola and GrabTaxi.

Ola has a presence in 102 Indian cities, while Didi’s platform provides 7 million rides per day across 360 Chinese cities.

GrabTaxi sees up to 1.5 million daily bookings across six countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand) in Southeast Asia.

Through the global alliance, these companies will collaborate and leverage each other’s technology, local market knowledge and business resources so that international travellers can seamlessly access local on-demand rides by using the same application they use at home, the joint statement said.

Each company will handle mapping, routing and payments through a secure API in their country of operation, it added.

Though the companies did not elaborate, the partnership may allow users to pay for rides in other countries using the app they use in the home country in the future.

“The partnership with Lyft, GrabTaxi and Ola allows Chinese users unprecedented ease of international travel and will be a win for the diversity and vitality of the global rideshare industry,” Cheng Wei, CEO of Didi Kuaidi, said.

“We are excited to partner with Lyft, Didi Kuaidi and GrabTaxi, allowing seamless mobility access across hundreds of cities globally for our combined user base that runs into hundreds of millions,” Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said.

“This will also allow all four companies to learn from each other’s local innovations and successes that can help in the shared mission to build better mobility solutions in the respective markets,” he added.

China’s internet conglomerate Tencent and e-commerce giant Alibaba both hold stakes in Didi.

China’s government is mulling over regulations that would impose taxi-like restrictions on private car-hailing services and could raise costs for internet booking leaders like Uber.

This would require internet-based car-booking operators to obtain licences, set up local offices and maintain China-based servers, China’s Ministry of Transportation said in a draft posted on its website in October.

To date, Uber has been hit by court injunctions in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Taxi driver protests against Uber have clogged streets in major European cities as well as in China and India.

TBP and Agencies