Its as if world’s entire private equity cash is being somehow organised to divert towards two (and only two) entities — USA’s Uber and China’s Didi Chuxing. Amid further intensification of the cab war, Didi Chuxing, Uber’s largest rival, has reportedly raised a staggering $7 Billion from a host of powerful investors, reports WSJ. The two have been engaged in a tug of war for China’s lucrative cab aggregation space.
As per reports coming in from various quarters, Didi Chuxing, China’s biggest ride-sharing company has closed a massive $4.5 billion fundraising round. This round includes Apple $1 Billion infusion into the Uber rival recently. This WSJ report comes days after Didi Chuxing announced raising of a $600Mn round from insurances firm, China Life. Wooh! Lots and lots of money there !
In addition, the company has also secured a $2.5 billion debt package from China Merchants Bank Co. Interestingly again, the news comes less than a day after reports came in that Uber was trying something similar. Uber has hired Morgan Stanley and Barclays PLC to sell a so-called leveraged loan of $1 billion to $2 billion to institutional investors in the coming weeks. The same was informed to WSJ by sources privy to the matter.
Didi Chuxing on the other hand, now has total funds well above the sum of $10 billion to fend off Uber and fuel expansion. And do note, while Uber is raising money for global expansion, Didi’s current focus is China — not that it might not oncrease its scope in coming years.
Uber recently attracted eyeballs when it secured $3.5 billion from the investment arm of Saudi Arabia earlier this month. However, Didi has upended the tables once again while also gaining a host of allies and investors that have huge future potential for taking the relationship forward.
Apart from Apple, which has already put in $1 billion in the latest round, the list of investors also include several banking and insurance entities from China. Existing investors Alibaba and Tencent are also supposed to have provided fresh funds to aid Didi in its latest money raising efforts.
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