Didi Kuaidi remains the leading car-hailing firm in China. (Photo : www.marsdigest.com)
Didi Kuaidi, China's largest mobile-based car-booking company, has announced on July 8, Wednesday, that it had raised $2 billion from its latest round of fundraising, as more powerful investors have shown interest to join, the China Daily reported.
The huge amount raised by Didi Kuaidi has made it the mobile Internet company that pooled the most money in a single round of fundraising, exceeding the $1.5 billion Facebook Inc. raised in 2011 and the $1.5 billion raised by Airbnb Inc. in its fundraising round.
Didi Kuaidi now claimed a cash reserve of about $3.5 billion and is planning to build itself into a one-stop transportation service provider, which is expected to trigger more competition in China's highly competitive online car-booking market.
The company said at a news conference that global investors, including Capital International Private Equity Fund, Ping An Ventures and Temasek, have shown great interest to join, and it hopes to raise a few hundred million dollars from new investors before the final closing of the fundraising next month.
Liu Qing, president of Didi Kuaidi, said that the company would use the money for research and development to make the app the "everything store" in transportation service.
Liu said that Didi Kuaidi plans to integrate various transport solutions, including taxi-hailing, private cars and ride-sharing, into one app and to add carpooling, chauffeur and bus services in the future.
"Chinese users have diversified needs in transportation and we want them to fulfill every single demand on our platform rather than install seven different apps for seven different types of transportation demand," said Liu.
According to Didi Kuaidi, they have started to look for talent around the world to reach their goal and ensure that the platform can be intelligent enough to know the kind of service that individual users want based on their previous car-hailing records.
