[danso]

How big is the gap between Lyft and Uber in India and China and other large Asian markets? In China, is there a state-favored rival [1] that could just shut out both? From an American perspective, it's hard to imagine Lyft overcoming Uber's lead...but maybe it's a sensible investment if Lyft has a strong chance of being bought by an Asian company?

[1] edit: Found this Fortune article, which describes Didi-Kuaidi as the "Uber of China" with 1 million drivers versus Uber's 100,000 drivers. Also, Didi is an investor in Lyft: http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/will-china-be-ubers-waterloo/

[yueq]

Uber has very little chance to win China market considering competition from Didi which is backed by Tencent and Alibaba. Considering the insurmountable dominance of Tencent's Wechat and Alibaba's AliPay on mobile phones in Chinese market.

Some reports that Didi has 80+% market in China and Uber gets 10+%.

[xiaoma]

Baidu was a strategic investor in Uber, and they lead another $1.2B round a couple of months ago. Both companies have local giants backing them, so anything can happen. If I had to bet, though, I'd bet on Uber winning in China if they can win enough of the rest of the world.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/07/uber-confirms-its-raised-1-...

[yueq]

I know this but BIDU is leaving first tier internet companies in China. This can be seen from its market cap which is almost a third of alibaba or tencent.

No matter what you bet -- you should always bet on something you can control not others.

[tim333]

Yeah but Didi's offering is a ride hailing app for regular taxis while Uber is doing the 'black car' thing. So they are kind of differentiated. Also Uber are partnered with Baidu, the Google of China so they can have Uber fares pop up when people google stuff. Or should that be baidu stuff? Dunno.

[yueq]

Not really.

Didi has multiple products already aside from taxis. limo/black-car, ride-share, valet which is far more than illegal-taxi-only in Uber China.

China explicitly requires license for commercial taxi operations. So UberX's business model is at great regulation risk.

[mayukh]

http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/03/lyft-didi-ola-and-grabtaxi-...

It's all one big fu to uber

[Apocryphon]

Perhaps they should name this alliance G.O.L.D.

[eva1984]

Lyft is like non-exist in China. Uber is currently second to Didi with about one third of its market share.