Five things to know about Didi

History
Didi, formally known as Xiaoju Kuaizhi, traces its beginnings to 2012 and rival taxi-hailing apps that gained backing from China's biggest Internet companies. Didi Dache was supported by Tencent Holdings, which took part in a $100 million fundraising round in 2014. A rival service, Kuaidi Dache, attracted investment from e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The two apps merged in February 2015 and subsequently expanded their businesses beyond calling taxis.

Names behind it

The Beijing-based company's CEO is Cheng Wei, a former employee of Alibaba. He recruited Jean Liu from Goldman Sachs Group to be CEO of Didi Dache in 2014. The board of directors include Lucy Peng, a co-founder of Alibaba.

Scope of services
What started as a service for hailing taxis has morphed into a company that offers ride-sharing, bus hiring, chauffeur services, auto financing and test-drive services. Didi said it has 99 per cent of the market for taxi-hailing apps and 87 per cent of the private car-hailing services.

Rivals
Didi competes with Uber in China and has started taking that fight abroad. Uber says it wants to be in at least 100 cities this year, or about a quarter of the market that Didi is operating in.

China's regulations
China's national government may be seen as more friendly toward ride-hailing services than local governments, which often are trying to protect their own taxi services. Didi believes it can help China alleviate the massive traffic jams and choking air pollution that plague its cities, and the national agency that oversees taxis scrapped some regulations in March to make it easier for the ride-sharing services to do business.

Yet both Didi and Uber face a thicket of regulations from local authorities. Didi now is trying to ally with the startups founded by provincial and city governments.