Didi Chuxing might be a name that some of you guys are familiar with. For those who aren’t, they are basically China’s take on ride-hailing services and back in 2016, they actually managed to squeeze out Uber, where the company sold China operations to the Chinese company and through a stock swap, turned Uber into a stakeholder as well.However for the most part, Didi Chuxing operated in China, but the company is now looking to expand and has announced their plans to enter the Australian market. This would make Australia their first western foray and would once again put them in direct competition with Uber, although admittedly Uber has been established within Australia for quite a while, so it is unclear as to whether or not Didi Chuxing will be able to unseat them once again.
In addition to Australia, the company will also be expanding to Latin America and Japan, with the latter coming in the form of a joint venture with SoftBank. “In 2018, Didi will continue to cultivate markets in Latin America, Australia and Japan. We are confident a combination of world-class transportation AI technology and deep local expertise will bring a better experience to overseas markets.”
It remains to be seen how well Didi Chuxing will perform in Australia where like we said, Uber has established itself for quite awhile already, but it should prove to be interesting.