SoftBank and Alibaba Group have led a round of financing worth approximately US$600 million for Chinese mobile taxi booking app KuaiDi Dache to expand and improve the app's services in China.
An Alibaba shareholder, US investment firm Tiger Global, will also take part in the round of funding.
This comes less than a week after China's Ministry of Transport announced a ban on drivers and private cars without taxi licenses being listed in taxi-hailing mobile apps such as Uber, Didi Dache and KuaiDi Dache.
Such apps must exclude private vehicles without taxi licenses in their listings.
KuaiDi Dache, founded in 2012, serves over a million taxis in over 300 cities in the mainland and Hong Kong.
“Their investment and expertise will enable us to greatly broaden our market reach, Chuanwei Lu, CEO of KuaiDi Dache, said.
Meanwhile, Nikesh Arora, vice chairman of SoftBank Corporation and CEO of SIMI, said, “We are convinced KuaiDi Dache will see further remarkable growth."
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