The merger between Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache has been confirmed, the top two taxi apps in China will get together to counter Uber.
Didi Dache, apparently the leading taxi app in China, trails only Uber in the space in terms of fundraising after it received an investment of US$700 million in a round led by Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek, along with DST Global. Chinese web giant Tencent also joined. Both apps are dominant in China, holding nearly 100 percent market share of taxi apps.
The merger is essentially a marriage between three camps:Tencent, Alibaba, and Softbank (the latter two backed Kuaidi). Tencent and Alibaba are rivals with Baidu, which invested in Uber. Softbank also invested US$250 million in GrabTaxi, a leading taxi app in Southeast Asia.Those moves sky-rocketed adoption of the taxi apps throughout 2014. Didi Dache revealed that its daily bookings grew ten-fold in the months after the service was made available to the hundreds of millions of people who use WeChat.
A lot remains unknown at this stage about the Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache merger…More details on the merger will be announced after Chinese New Year.
Stay tuned.
Sources: SkyNews Australia, TechCrunch
Image credits: TechCrunch