China-based ride hailing app Didi Kuaidi has raised $2bn from investors including Ping An Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of insurer Ping An, Bloomberg reported today.
The round also included e-commerce group Alibaba, internet company Tencent, Singaporean state-backed fund Temasek, investment firm Coatue Management and Capital International Private Equity Funds, a subsidiary of investment firm Capital Group. Didi Kuaidi raised the cash at a $15bn valuation.
Didi Kuaidi comprises China’s two largest ride sharing services, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, which merged earlier this year. Their businesses still operate separately under a holding company called Xiaoju Kuaizhi and jointly span more than 360 Chinese cities.
The round follows the $742m secured from social network Sina Weibo, Coatue and Farallon Capital Management earlier this year, as well as the $1.5bn raised from backers including Alibaba, Tencent, Temasek, telecommunications firm SoftBank, DST Global, GGV Capital, Citic Capital Holdings, Tiger Fund, Matrix Partners and New Horizon Capital pre-merger.
Didi Kuaidi plans to further increase the size of the round, already the second largest raised by a private company, company president Jean Liu told Bloomberg. The largest was the $2.8bn raised by Didi Kuaidi’s US-based competitor, Uber, in February this year.
“There are a lot of very valuable investors who still want to come in, and we like their brands and value-add,” Liu said. “We will be very focused in the China market, we will spend heavily on R&D, on big data, and also on how to enlarge our market.”
More specifically, the funding will be used to enhance Didi Kuaidi’s shuttle bus, chauffeur and carpooling services as it seeks to fend off Uber, which has pledged to spend $1bn to expand in China.
The round could eventually reach $2.5bn, a person familiar with the situation told the Wall Street Journal.