Didi, China’s rival to Uber, explains why it makes no profit
Ride-hailing services around the world struggle to keep up with expenses
Didi Chuxing taking competition with nemesis Uber abroad
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, an investor of Didi.)
These costs include:
- Bonuses for drivers during rush hours
- Research, safety, customer support, human resources and offline operational costs
- Tax, online payment processing
In other words, Didi is shelling out the equivalent of 2% of each fare from its own pocket for every ride. And when you have 550 million users on your platform, that quickly adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses each year.
“Didi is by no means an evil company, and would never prioritize generating profit above anything else,” it read. “We have not been profitable over the past six years.”
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