The Chinese taxi aggregator DiDi, considered one of the main competitors of Yandex.Taxi, has decided to conquer the Russian market by significantly expanding its presence in the country. Daniil Petin, the operational director of the Russian branch of DiDi, spoke about this in an interview with RBC.
According to him, the total number of cities where DiDi plans to operate will exceed 100 – against the current 16. In the near future, the service will be launched in cities with a population of over one million.
“Among them, for example, Krasnodar, Ufa, Voronezh and, perhaps, Krasnoyarsk. By the end of the year we plan to launch more than a hundred cities in Russia,” Petin said.
At the same time, in the foreseeable future, DiDi does not plan to operate in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which Petin calls “very interesting markets”: “While we are looking at these markets.
DiDi was launched in Russia in August 2020, starting work in Kazan. Since then, the service has been launched in several regional and republican centers, including Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Izhevsk, Orenburg.
The Russian division of DiDi is owned by the Chinese DiDi Chuxing. In 2016, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) invested in it, but the share of its ownership has not been disclosed.