Kuaidi Dache raises US$600mln

Popular taxi-hailing app Kuaidi Dache, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, said on Thursday that it had raised $600 million to strengthen its position in the hotly contested market.

The latest round of financing was led by Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, with the participation of Alibaba and Tiger Global Management LLC.

Lu Chuanwei, CEO of Kuaidi Dache, said the money will help Kuaidi expand its services in China and make a further positive impact on urban transportation.

Launched in 2012, Kuaidi, with its integrated mapping and third-party payment technology, has linked up with more than 1 million taxis in more than 300 cities across China, including Hong Kong.

Domestic technology consultancy Analysys International in November named Kuaidi as the taxi-hailing app market leader in China, with a market share of 54.4 percent.

Jonathan Lu, CEO of Alibaba Group, said: "Kuaidi Dache is transforming China's urban travel through technology and enriching the lives of many people in the process. We believe that the mobile Internet is entering an exciting phase, and Kuaidi Dache is well-poised to grow from this."

However, Kuaidi faces stiff competition from domestic rival Didi Dache.

Didi Dache, backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd, Singapore government investment firm Temasek Holdings and DST Global, completed a Series D round in December of $700 million.

The rivalry between Kuaidi and Didi came to a head in the first half of 2014. In a battle for market share, they spent an estimated 2 billion yuan ($325 million) in subsidies to drivers and customers.

Kuaidi introduced Yi Hao Zhuan Che last year to enter the luxury car-booking service segment, which brought it into competition with San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc, valued at $40 billion and backed by Baidu Inc.

Wang Xiaofeng, an analyst at Forrester Research, said that continued large investment in the sector come as no surprise because the market demand and potential is so enormous.

"Aside from the service they provide to consumers, these apps will also be of great interest to technology companies because of the data collected, which can improve urban logistics," she said.

The emergence of mobile Internet-enabled on-demand service by taxis and private cars poses new challenges to the traditional taxi industry and those in charge of regulating the industry.

The Ministry of Transport announced last week a ban on drivers and private cars without taxi licenses being listed on mobile apps such as Uber, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache.

Meanwhile taxi drivers across the country have gone on strike, primarily against high taxi rental fees but also clearly angered by rising competition from private cars made available by these mobile apps.

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