Uber’s Chinese Rival Didi Kuaidi Raises $200 Million

In its latest bid to amp up its game against Uber, Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Kuaidi has attracted a $200 million investment from China Merchants Bank (CMB) as a part of its $3 billion fundraising round.

The investment underpins a new strategic partnership with CMB, which would allow the bank’s customers to pay for their Didi Kuaidi rides through CMB credit cards and, in turn, the bank will help finance car purchases for new Didi Kuaidi drivers, Reuters reported.

The ride-hailing service, which is also backed by eCommerce giant Alibaba and social commerce company Tencent Holdings, now stands at a valuation of $16.5 billion with its latest investment round.

With $3 billion of funding, Didi Kuaidi wants to pick investors who can provide more than just money, said Didi Kuaidi President Jean Liu.

Some of the other investors which supported the funding round include China Investment Corp, Capital International Private Equity Fund, Ping An Ventures, Alibaba, Tencent, Temasek and Coatue Management, according to Reuters.

With its $16.5 billion valuation, the company lags far behind Uber’s $62.5 billion valuation — but not on its home turf. Currently, the ride-hailing company is more than twice the size of Uber’s Chinese arm, which has a market valuation of $7 billion.

As if raising fresh investment and attracting new users weren’t enough to beat Uber at the ride-hailing game, the company seems to be leaving no coin unturned.

In December last year, the company partnered with other ride-hailing app companies, including Uber’s American rival, Lyft, India-based Ola and South Asian giant GrabTaxi, to better compete against Uber by allowing international travelers to book a ride using one of the partner apps and pay for it in their local currency.

Together, the companies also raised $8 billion to support and expand the partnership.

More recently, the company also launched a test drive service in partnership with 19 car companies as a new eCommerce experiment. The success of the service, which led 1.8 million users across six cities to order 1.4 million test rides within three months of its launch, propelled the company to announce its plans to launch a full-fledged eCommerce platform for automobile sales in the near future.