Didi Chuxing CEO says ride-sharing orders recover to pre-pandemic levels

[BEIJING] Didi Chuxing, China's biggest ride-hailing company which counts SoftBank as a backer, saw its ride-sharing orders in China this month recover to levels seen over the same period a year earlier, its founder and chief executive Cheng Wei said.

Didi's peak daily ride sharing orders surpassed 30 million, Mr Cheng said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the company's bike sharing business, Didi Bike, saw daily orders reaching 10 million.

The recovery in orders comes as most of China has reopened for business after the coronavirus outbreak. The country, where the coronavirus emerged late last year, has seen a sharp fall in cases since March.

Didi, which has operations in eight overseas countries - Japan, Australia and six Latin America countries, has over 10,000 employees, including 2,000 overseas, Mr Cheng said.

In April, Mr Cheng said the company wanted to achieve 100 million orders per day and accumulate 800 million monthly active users globally by 2022.

That same month, a senior Didi executive told Reuters in an interview that its overseas orders were recovering from mid-March lows.

REUTERS