After chasing Uber out of China, Didi eyes global expansion

With 20 million rides a day, China's car-hailing app Didi Chuxing aims to become a serious competitor in other countries.“We intend to be global,” Didi's president Jean Liu (pictured) said at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive 2016 global technology conference in the US. “We aspire to be a global company.”Didi Chuxing has long been referred to as "China's Uber." It boasts 20 million rides a day, Liu said, three times more than the rest of its international rivals combined.In July, Uber dropped out of the Chinese market and sold its assets there to Didi Chuxing.Liu said Didi Chuxing's algorithm can predict where users will be demanding rides with a 90% accuracy rate about 15 minutes before it happens. Users can match their rides based on the trove of data, while drivers have personalised routes based on their preferences. Didi Chuxing is still in its early stages of collecting data to build an AI for autonomous cars, Liu said."A lot of people think, 'Oh, 20 million rides, that means you're just a ride-share company,'" Liu said. "But in reality, we are a data company."According to a recent Survey Monkey study, Uber is valued at $62.5 billion, to Didi's $15 billion, and Lyft's $5.5 billion.