BEIJING, Dec. 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Didi Dache ("Didi" or the "Company"), the leading mobile-based transportation service provider in China, announced today that it has raised more than $700 million in its latest round of fundraising. The round was led by Singapore-based investment company Temasek, DST Global, as well as Tencent, China's leading Internet company.
This marks the single biggest investment round in China's mobile Internet sector. It is also one of the largest private financing rounds ever across all Internet companies in China.
Cheng Wei, founder and CEO of Didi, said: "Didi will continue its commitment in providing mobile-based transportation services to more users, strengthening our market leadership, increasing efforts in research and development and enriching our product offerings. The company believes in its mission of making transportation easier for everyone through mobile Internet."
Founded in June 2012, Didi has grown into the largest mobile-based transportation service provider in China and globally. The company offers services in over 300 cities in China. It has achieved more than 100 million registered users, 1 million registered taxi drivers, and 5.2 million peak daily orders.
Didi secured its market leadership position soon after its launch. According to a report by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), 74.1% of transportation mobile app users choose to use Didi. According to a report published by Talking Data in November 2014, Didi has more than twice the monthly active users of the second largest player in China in October 2014.
In addition to the taxi-booking service, Didi launched the Didi Black service, a service targeting mid- to high- end customers, in August 2014. The Didi Black service now covers 16 big cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and is rapidly expanding. Orders for this service have exceeded 150,000 per day, making Didi the largest and fastest growing company in the mobile-based limo service segment.
Jean Liu, COO of Didi, said: "The Company has dramatically changed consumers' commuting behavior in China and helped to address the biggest challenges faced by the transportation system. The value of our product has been well recognized by our users, the government, as well as the capital markets. We will continue to fulfill our mission of improving the efficiency of China's transportation system."
Didi aims to develop a comprehensive transportation platform that covers a wide range of services including taxi, Didi Black, last-mile logistics, mobile-based retail and intelligent public transportation systems. Didi's platform strategy is making solid progress as its taxi business continues to mature and the black car business unit achieves ongoing exponential growth.
Tencent has been Didi's strategic partner and an important investor. Martin Lau, President of Tencent, said: "Our collaboration is highly synergistic, where Didi enjoys access to our large user base and Tencent can provide a best-in-class service to our social and mobile payment users. As their strategic investor, we are particularly excited by the wide adoption by both users and taxi drivers across China. The increased investment demonstrates our commitment to further deepen our relationship with Didi and to connect users with more convenient and high quality services."
DST Global's founder, Yuri Milner, said: "Mobile Internet has created a wave of opportunities for the transportation market globally. DST believes in Didi's mission to make daily transportation more efficient in China."
