Thursday, March 28

China’s Ride Aggregator Didi Halts Domestic Services for a Week

China’s Largest Ride Aggregator Service, Didi Chuxing has reported to halt one of its domestic services for over a week following a death of female passenger that sparked questions on safety this Friday.

The killing of a 21-year-old flight attendant in the central province of Henan last week diverted attention leading to an intense debate over China’s social media that became the most talked about topic microblog platform Weibo in no time.

The case has given birth to questions over safety concerns challenging ride-sharing company, Didi as it takes on rivals such as Uber Technologies Inc. Didi is backed by Apple Inc and Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp.

The company has also apologised as it is about to suspend its Hitch service- a pooling service for passengers and drivers going to the same destination from Saturday nationwide, and would start checks on drivers.

As said in a statement, “Didi will suspend the Hitch service for a week nationwide for self-inspection and rectification.”

Meanwhile, Police in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou is still looking for the suspected killer of the victim. The company also informed that the suspect had borrowed his parent’s account to take orders thereby violating company’s terms of services.

While the Hitch service comes to a stop, other services will remain operational at world’s largest ridesharing company Didi, which is a dominant player in China with about 450 million users. Two years back, US cab major, Uber had sold off its operations to Didi for a stake of 17.5 percent in the Chinese firm that had also resulted in a $1-billion investment in Uber.