Chinese cab-hailing service Didi Chuxing has received yet another investment of about $600 million from China Life Insurance Co. Ltd to rival and boost its position against Uber. Prior to this, the cab aggregator had raised over $1 billion from Apple.
The Chinese cab aggregator is in a heated battle with the American ride hailing service Uber, who’s trying to use fresh funds pumped into the venture to dominate China. Uber has recently raised a whopping $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to become the most heavily backed private company with a valuation of $60 billion.
The news comes in just a week after we’ve seen Didi announce that the company is in the process of raising new funds, which are even bigger than the funds received by their rival, Uber. The current investment received by the cab hailing service doesn’t beat Uber in their funding or valuation, but might be a tranche of funds that it is currently in the process of raising.
China Life has also made an undisclosed investment in Uber Global last year, but it hasn’t been confirmed whether the finds were used to bolster their Chinese operations or not. As the cab aggregator Didi told in a statement, investment by China Life — the largest insurer of the Asia-Pacific region — has been broken down into two halves wherein it has included equity of $300 million and a long-term borrowing commitment of $305 million.
The two parties will also collaborate on investment opportunities in mobile transportation and related sectors in China and beyond,
said the statement.
Didi Chuxing president Jean Liu believes that once it completes raising funds, it will become one of the best capitalized private companies in the global market. Prior to China Life’s investment, the company had raised over $6.3 billion including funding rounds before and after its merger. Didi currently has presence in over 400 cities in China and is serving over 14 million rides which is five fold when compared to the entire US cab hailing market.
Both Didi and Uber have raised massive funds to help them subsidise fares and gain market share, but it still remains unknown which company out of Uber and Didi will manage to grab the taxi market in the world’s most populous country. Uber, however has made claims that it can easily overtake Didi over the period of remaining year.
