Didi Bus has launched “direct shuttle” in some parts of Beijing at a special offer of one yuan for the first two tickets. It plans to extend service to the entire city by the end of July.
10 shuttle routes opened in Beijing
Didi-Kuaidi’s director Qing Liu announced the bus project at the first Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship, SheEra, held in May. Now dozens of Didi Bus’s direct shuttle can be seen on the streets in Beijing’s Tongzhou, Huilongguan and Changping districts. The shuttles offer very attractive prices – a ride from Beijing’s Liyuan to Zhongguancun areas costs only RMB10.
Didi-Kuaidi is spearheading smart bus operations with its direct shuttle service. It is conducting internal testing with its Wechat public account and will transfer the finished product to the Didi ride hailing app.
Customized shuttle is the first step of Didi-Kuaidi’s entry into the public transport segment and it eventually hopes to leverage a powerful platform, influential branding and big data processing capacity with integrated car and bus resources to launch customized public transport with smart commute shuttle and school bus operations in its long-term plan.
Didi-Kuaidi’s enters segment with huge advantage
China’s smart bus market is in its fledging stage with the majority of projects still in the stage of raising their Series A financing rounds. These projects are putting together development teams, products and technical backup with capital financing that can reach up to tens of millions of yuan.
One industry observer said Didi-Kuaidi has a huge advantage in user base, brand marketing and capital, making it extremely hard for newly startups to compete with it.
Didi Bus will be a major part of the Didi-Kuaidi comprehensive platform, according to Ms. Liu’s plan. Didi-Kuaidi’s goal is to become the largest one-stop travel platform in the world within three years, with 10 million drivers offering service to 30 million passengers per day at a pickup time of no more than three minutes for any locations.
Didi-Kuaidi’s comprehensive platform will gain an even bigger advantage after adding online bus operations, the industry observer said. Users can choose from a variety of vehicles to find the most suitable ground transport solutions to meet their time and price requirements.
Offering a large variety of options on its platform will give Didi-Kuaidi the benefits and synergy of increased users, traffic, brands and data while also forming a formidable barrier for competitors from other vertical segments in the travel industry.(Translation by David)
