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Apple invests $1 bn in China's Didi Chuxing

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apple_feApple Inc has invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing, earlier known as Didi Kuaidi, in a deal that gives the tech giant a stake in Uber Technologies Inc's main competitor in the world's second-largest economy.

The deal with Apple is the single-largest investment Didi Chuxing has ever received, the Chinese company said in a statement. Apple's investment is part of a larger round in which a group of Chinese and international institutions also took part, it added.

The development comes a few months after Didi Chuxing last year invested an undisclosed amount in a $500 million fundraising round by Ola, India's largest cab aggregator and Uber's main rival in the country. Both Ola and Didi Chuxing are also backed by Japan's SoftBank.

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The Chinese company also earlier invested $100 million in Lyft, a San Francisco-based ride-sharing app that competes with Uber in the US. In December last year, Ola, Didi Chuxing, Lyft and Southeast Asia-based GrabTaxi formed a global alliance to compete with Uber.

Apple joins China's Tencent and Alibaba Group in making a strategic investment in Didi Chuxing. The development comes at a time when Apple has been striving to boost sales in China, its second-largest market after the US.

"DiDi exemplifies the innovation taking place in the iOS developer community in China," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO.

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Didi completes about 11 million rides a day on its platform, serving close to 300 million users across 400 Chinese cities, the statement said. It works with about 14 million Chinese car-owners and drivers, and has an 87% market share in private car-hailing and 99% market share in taxi-hailing in China, the statement said.

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