Uber在中国遭遇的挑战

    去年12月，从打车应用公司Uber泄露出来的文件显示，全球每周已有80万人次通过Uber进行叫车服务。我们可以肯定地说，这个数字现在又增长了不少。

    但是不管它增长了多少，Uber的业务量与它在中国的主要竞争对手“快的打车”相比还是略显苍白。快的在中国以外几乎没有什么知名度，但是据说它的业务量每天最多能达到600万人次。因此从某种角度上来看，中国的电商巨头阿里巴巴投资的“快的打车”和腾讯公司投资的“嘀嘀打车”（嘀嘀的规模和业务量据说和快的差不多）才是打车应用程序界真正的王者。

    39岁的连续创业者、快的打车的联合创始人乔•李（译音）表示：“这种交通服务在中国很有前途，目标市场非常非常大。”

    要指出的是，快的打车的业务模式和Uber不太一样。快的打车应用程序现在已经拥有1亿名用户，不过它最主要的用途是用来在300多个中国最拥堵的城市里叫出租车。公司本身并不从中抽成，这款叫车应用程序也只不过是一个招揽用户的工具。

    然而随着时间的推移，快的打车也希望利用“免费增值”模式，通过其庞大的用户群赚钱。今年夏天，快的在20个城市推出了豪车租用服务，可以说是针锋相对地与Uber的高端租车服务进行竞争。最终，快的打车希望将业务拓展到拼车、导游和快递服务领域，而这些也正是大多数交通类应用都虎视眈眈的领域。

    那么，快的是如何在短短两年内，从零发展到1亿名用户，并拥有了100万名司机的呢？乔•李表示这要归功于中国特色——大城市交通拥堵，公共交通网络不完善，再加上有大量价格相对便宜的出租车，为这种叫车服务提供了得天独厚的条件。

    另外补贴也起了一定帮助。为了扩展其网络，快的允许用户向出租车发送“愿意支付小费”的信息。这个简单的功能很快吸引来了大批司机，同时它也使乘车者的人数大幅增加，因为它解决了一个重要的问题：在很多城市，尤其是在高峰时段和恶劣天气时，对出租车的需求都超过了供给。乔•李表示：“我们用这个简单的功能推动了它的整体发展。”后来快的打车还为司机提供了另一项激励。如果使用快的打车应用程序内嵌的支付宝功能支付的话，公司会额外补贴1美元。

    快的打车已经获得了超过1亿美元的融资，该公司还表示，它已经拥有了一个100万名司机的庞大网络。腾讯公司投资的嘀嘀打车也通过提供补贴，培养起了一个规模差不多的网络。快的和嘀嘀的互相较劲的补贴竞争已经升级成了价格大战，最终出钱的还是双方背后的大佬——阿里巴巴和腾讯。

    Uber明显是作为一个弱者进入这个市场的，不过CEO特拉维斯•卡拉尼克表示，他很享受这个位置。

    本周一，卡拉尼克在旧金山参加TechCrunch Disrupt峰会时表示：“我们必须要做小家伙，对我来说这就像回家一样。”

    In December, leaked Uber documents showed that the company was completing about 800,000 rides a week around the world. It’s a safe bet that the number is much higher now.

    No matter how big it has gotten, however, Uber’s ride volume pales in comparison with the numbers of rides of its main Chinese rival, Kuaidi. That company, little known outside of China, is claiming up to 6 million rides every day. That makes Kuaidi, which is backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, or perhaps rival Didi Taxi (which is backed by Tencent Holdings and boasts of a similar scale and footprint), the world’s king of the ride-hailing apps at least by some measures.

    “This kind of transportation service has a big future in China,” says Joe Lee, a 39-year-old serial entrepreneur who is the co-founder of Kuaidi. “The addressable market is very very big.”

    To be sure, Kuaidi’s model is different from that of Uber. Its app, which counts 100 million users, is used mostly to hail taxis in some 300 of China’s notoriously congested cities. The company makes no money from those rides, and the hailing app is nothing more than a tool to acquire customers.

    Over time, however, Kuaidi is hoping to monetize its giant customer base with what it calls a “freemium” model. This summer, Kuaidi launched a luxury limo service in 20 cities that competes directly with Uber’s high-end black cars. Eventually, it plans to extend into the kind of ride-sharing, courier and delivery services that appear to be on the sights of most transportation startups.

    So how did Kuaidi go from zero to 100 million users, and a staggering 1 million drivers, in just two years? Lee says China’s characteristics—large, congested cities with poor public transit networks and massive fleets of relatively inexpensive taxis—were tailor-made for this kind of service.

    Subsidies helped too. To expand its network, Kuaidi let customers signal to taxis that they would add a tip to their fares. That simple feature quickly lured drivers, but it also dramatically expanded the number of riders, as it solved a critical issue: at rush hour and during bad weather, demand for taxis exceeds supply in many cities. “We used that simple function to kick-start the whole thing,” Lee says. Since then, Kuaidi added another incentive for drivers. On transactions that go through Alipay, a very popular payment service in China that is built into the Kuaidi app, the company will add an additional $1.

    Kuaidi, which has raised more than $100 million, now claims 1 million drivers on its network. Didi has also grown its network to similar size by subsidizing rides. The competing subsidies have led to a ruthless price war that is essentially financed by Kuaidi’s and Didi’s biggest backers, Alibaba and Tencent.

    Uber is entering this market as a clear underdog, a position that CEO Travis Kalanick says he relishes.

    “We get to be the little guy,” Kalanick said on Monday during the TechCrunch Disrupt technology conference in San Francisco. “For me that’s like homecoming.”