Ride-hailing firm Didi faces rap over talent poaching. (Photo : Getty Images)
The rivalry between Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing and mapping company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd. continues to heat up as the latter has sued the former for talent poaching, China Money Network reported.
The case is currently handled by the People's Court of Beijing Chaoyang division. According to court documents, AutoNavi, who is asking for damages worth $ 10.9 million, Didi allegedly poached eight engineers.
The firm noted that six engineers and Mr. Hu, a senior manager armed with "core confidential commercial secrets" altogether left AutoNavi.
The employees are being suspected to have joined the ride-hailing company before or immediately after their departure. This comes despite their contracts stating that AutoNavi prohibits joining a rival firm.
"The above individuals all worked for Mr. Hu and departments closed related to him while at AutoNavi," the court documents stated.
On the same report, AutoNavi noted that "they were important research and development professionals at the company and had knowledge of the company's commercial secrets, while some engineers copied our commercial secrets before their departure, significantly hurting our rights."
Didi is one of the firms where e-commerce titan Alibaba is a shareholder. As ride-hailing in China is lucrative, the company and its financial services arm, Ant Financial, added an investment worth $400 million back in May 2016.
Alibaba is also an investor of Kuaidi Dache, one of China's ride-hailing companies that merged with Didi Dache in 2015. Nonetheless, its 10 percent stake at the newly built merger was diluted when Didi merged with Uber China in 2016.
Meanwhile, Didi's talent poaching issue is not an isolated case. As competition becomes fiercer among top tech firms in the country, raps over acquiring technical as well as senior management experts have been a typical fuel used to ignite a rivalry.
Earlier this year, though the company claimed the reports as false, six employees who previously worked for Huawei Technology have been rumored to be arrested over the same issue.
