Didi Chuxing, a major ride-sharing firm in China, offering transport services to over 450 million users in the country, has decided to launch its services in Mexico in 2018. Apparently, this is the firm’s first global expansion that may set forth a new era of competition with Uber, a multinational transport technology firm based in the U.S. Sources have claimed that the former is the most reputed privately-owned firm across the globe after Uber. Earlier in 2016, it was reported that Didi had purchased the latter’s car-sharing business in China.
Industry experts claim that this strategic move may prompt Uber to make an attempt to better its reputation and its service portfolio. The firm will try to retain its market share considering the tough competition from Didi, which has started recruitment of drivers in Mexico. As per the reports, earlier in November this year, the Chinese based ride-sharing firm had entered into discussions with ProMexico, a government trust promoting international trade & investment in the country, on topics such as the future growth prospects of car sharing market across the country.
On March 9th, 2017, Didi had inaugurated a new research & development unit in Mountain View in California, which will now house the team of engineers and researchers focusing on the application of AI in security as well as autonomous car driving technologies. It has also been confirmed that Didi has made large-scale investments in many of Uber’s business rivals such as India’s Ola, the US-based transportation firm Lyft, Singapore’s Grab, Brazil’s ride-hailing Application 99, Dubai based Careem, and Estonia’s Taxify.
According to the key officials of Didi Chuxing, the firm has established quite a name in nearly 450 cities of China. It also stated that in the last quarter of 2016, the company had a record of nearly 20 million car rides per day. Authentic sources have stated that the renowned China-based ride-sharing firm also provided bus rental and bike-sharing services to its customers along with famous carpooling services, apparently called hitch services.
