According to the prospectus of major Chinese car rental company eHi Car Service, this April it had invested US$25 million in Chinese taxi app Kuaidadiche.
It has been revealed that on the 21st of April 2014, eHi Car Service’s wholly-owned subsidiary Elite Plus bought 8.4% of the Kuaidadiche’s B shares. Kuaidadiche also gave eHi Car Services a stock warrant to purchase a further 4,684,074 C shares.
Kuidadiche has many users and in the future will likely introduce car rental services that are similar to eHi Car Service’s. This means that eHi Car Service’s investment in Kuaidadiche is really a precautionary move.
The capital for eHi Car Service’s investment in Kuaidadiche mainly came from Ctrip. Currently Ctrip is the largest single shareholder of eHi Car Services and holds 19,468,193 of eHi Car Service’s shares.
Ctrip invested US$94.05 million last year and US$13.02 million this year in eHi Car Services. They now own 23% of eHi Car Services shares.
Ctrip CEO James Liang says, “The customer behavior of bookings nowadays is completely different from before. The booking window has shrunk dramatically and customer demand for personalized service is high. We at Ctrip realize that we can’t do everything on our own so we’re willing to work with the best companies in specialized fields. Together we will develop the market”.(Translation by David）
