[Updated]DiDi to Receive $15m from Tencent. Investors Start Chasing Taxi Apps in China.

Taxi app DiDi Dache (namely DiDi Taxi) reportedly has received US$15 million, at valuation of US$ 60 million, from Tencent who will take 20% stake in it. Cheng Wei, CEO of DiDi Dache responded by saying that the news wasn’t confirmed with them.(Update: The news would be confirmed later.) DiDi’s first round of funding, US$3 million, was from GSR Ventures in September 2012.

Another Hangzhou-based taxi app KuaiDi Dache confirmed it had obtained investment from Alibaba. Da Che Xiao Mi (namely taxi assistant), the taxi app under Yongche, a car rental service, also got tens of millions of US dollars from China Broadband Capital Partners (Update: Yongche announced tens of millions of dollars Series B funding from China Broadband Capital Partners on April 26 without noting that the fund will be used for Da Che Xiao Mi).

There has been more than 20 similar services in the market. Kuaidi Dache and others are based in southern China, while in the north DiDi Dache and YaoYao ZhaoChe are well-known.

Emerging taxi apps may face regulatory risks soon. Most of those services allow users to pay extra money to hail a cab when needed, which Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport recently claimed to ban. Officials said they were developing a taxi service platform to take care of all the taxi hailng issues in Beijing.