The long and winding road to success

Have you tried out Uber and other rival services?

Yes.

What has been the biggest change in your life in the past one year?

During the past year, I found that I am now more of a dreamer. I used to be a rational investor but now, knowing that there will be countless barriers ahead, I dare to have a more long-term perspective than before.

What is your ultimate dream for Didi Kuaidi?

To make Chinese people enjoy their daily commuting. We want the company to be the world's largest one-stop transportation service provider. Now it is the largest by scale as we are serving millions of customers every day. We believe in three years' time we will be able to offer high-quality transportation service to over 30 million users each day and a vehicle will reach the passenger within three minutes in every major Chinese cities.

What is the core competitiveness of Didi Kuaidi?

We believe that we are sitting on a huge amount of user data, which can be very handy for customer behavior analysis.

From an investor's perspective, tell us why your company is a good candidate for investment?

I can think of three points. First, as a domestic player, we know about the demand from our users and drivers in the network better than anyone else. The scale of our network enables us to deliver highest quality transportation services at the lowest cost. As a full-service platform that offers varieties of services, including taxi, limo, ride-sharing and even buses, we have the synergies that the other players do not have. Our network has the most vehicles, shortest time of arrival and the lowest cost for passengers and the highest hourly income for drivers. Second, we process multiple amount of data compared to anywhere else in the world. Our big data technology is the core competence that helps us perpetually improve the efficiency. Third, we have the best team in this market which has been tested through the most fierce competition since the founding of the company.

The authorities, however, seem to be having second thoughts on car-hailing services. What are the major regulatory risks?

We would like to help the government solve the problems. From the information I received, the policymakers understand the benefits (of car-sharing business) to the cities. The biggest headache right now is how to make every player in the industry happy and we are already making meaningful progress.

Jean Liu's Bio

Year of birth: 1978

Career:

Goldman Sachs, various posts (2002-2014)

Didi Dache, chief operating officer (2014)

Didi Kuaidi, president (2015)

Education:

Bachelor's degree in computer science from Peking University (1996-2000)

Master's degree from Harvard University (2000-2002)

Family:

Married, three children