Didi Kuaidi on Tuesday announced that it allows developers to develop third party app to access the service by releasing its SDK (software development kit). Previously, in December, the company announced that it has achieved 1.43 billion rides, surpassing Uber.
Venture Beat reported that the company rolled out a public SDK (software development kit) that enables third-party apps to bake in the ability to hail a Didi ride from within their own apps.
Didi Kuadi is the undisputed market leader in China ride hailing service. The Beijing-based company has operated in more than 300 cities in China. In Beijing, Didi Kuaidi handles more than 1 million request every day. Signalling a huge market for ride hailing service in China and Didi Kuaidi has its operated in more than 300 cities in China, with millions of requests daily.
Didi Kuaidi was established in 2015 as a merger between two ride hailing giants in China, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache. The two ride hailing service companies decided to merge in February 2015 to hinder Uber expansion in China, thus protecting the local market. Last year, Uber created a global partnership with American's Lyft, Singaporean's GrabTaxi and Indian's Ola ride hailing services to expand the market.
Prior to releasing its SDK, Didi Kuaidi has allowed third party application from its selected partner to access the service. According to TechCrunch, there are 30 apps accessing its service — including chat app WeChat, Alibaba's Alipay, Tencent Map and others.
The most active one to access Didi Kuadi service is WeChat, the largest messaging app in China with over 500 million active users. WeChat has included a feature to allow its users booking Didi car from the messenger. Although similar to Uber and Facebook Messenger in U.S., but Didi has a larger market in China, which will grow even bigger with the new breakthrough of releasing its SDK.
Didi Kuadi has reported that it reached the milestone of more than 1 billion ride in 2015, a number that Uber took six years to achieve. ZDNet reported curently Didi Kuaidi has 87.2% of China's private-car hailing market, processing 7 million rides per day in 360 cities in China. The number has not included other services the company provides for bus, transit and traditional taxi.
Didi CEO and founder Cheng Wei said, "Didi believes that the mobile transportation market will continue to experience robust growth as market structure stabilises and the idea of sharing economy gains further recognition in China,"
Now, Didi Kuaidi is expecting a bigger market to open as many applications will be able to access its service. This will increase the company value, which is now already at $16.5 billion market value.
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