After weeks of rumors, Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing announced today it has added bike-sharing service from ofo to its app.
DiDi users will have direct access to ofo’s bright yellow bikes in the app.
As a major investor of ofo, DiDi has poured a combined hundreds of million USD in three financing round of the bike-rental company. The product link-up is a major step towards more extensive collaboration between the two.
The cooperation comes shortly after Mobike integrated its service into WeChat, a popular messaging app developed by Mobike’s investor Tencent. Mobike and WeChat’s tie-up has proven quite successful for both parties. The weekly utilization rate of Mobike surged by 100% after it’s integration, the company disclosed. On the other hand, WeChat’s mini-app program, which witnessed lukewarm reception, also received lots of boost from Mobike.
Obviously, the partnership would help ofo to gain more traffic, giving it more edge in a tightening competition with multiplying rivals. But, similar to Mobike-WeChat’s case, ofo isn’t the only one that would benefit from the cooperation. Didi Chuxing has been suffering from a drop in active users since last year after the company called off a previous generous subsidy program. Likewise, ofo, which claims over 10 million orders per day, would also drive Didi’s performance.
Together with the announcement, DiDi disclosed that its bus service will enter into an enhanced partnership with ofo. ofo’s bike-routing analytics will help refine the AI-powered algorithms in DiDi’s real-time bus tracker to better respond to users’ differentiated short-distance mobility needs and design more efficient bike-bus transfer options.