Didi Chuxing, the world’s arguably most dominant ride-hailing player, just went through the largest reshuffle for its biggest business group, the Express Mobility Group. The group sees the addition of ten new business units including carpooling, a platform for drivers, and a platform for customers.
Founded in February this year, the Express Mobility Group was the ride-hailing giant’s first attempt to integrate its three core businesses—Didi Taxi, Didi Express, and Uber China. Concurrently, the Chinese O2O titan Meituan added a car-hailing function to its all-encompassing app that lets one get everything from food delivery to flight tickets. The organizational integration, some insiders observe, might have been instrumental in Didi Chuxing’s fightback against Meituan.
“In the past the units fight the battle on its own. For instance, the express folks don’t want to lose customers to the premium folks. An integration means each person is carrying out everyone’s KPI,” a Didi Chuxing employee told Caijing (in Chinese).
Gone are the days of ruthless price wars and rapid land grab in China’s ride-hailing market. The new move of business units signals Didi Chuxing’s new focus on professional internal management. As of Q3 2016, Didi Chuxing claims an untouchable 96.7% of the on-demand premium car users in China, says a report by CNIT-Research.
Earlier in February, the ride-hailing giant announced five key strategies for 2017—internal organization, smart transportation, premium car services, global expansion, and offline vehicle and driver management. The latest reshuffle is a step further in achieving the most important goal, namely, internal organization, head of the Express Mobility Group Chen Ting says in an internal employee letter.
Didi Chuxing completed its latest round of over $5.5 billion in April to take on the global market. During an interview with the Charlie Rose Show on October 9th, Didi Chuxing president Liu Qing revealed that the company now completes 25 million orders daily and 600 orders per second during peak hours.
