Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said on Friday that selling its operations to rival Didi in China has made way for the cab aggregator to focus on other markets, including India.
Mr Kalanick said the “battle in China became global”, which made the U.S.-based firm decide to merge with Didi.
In August, Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing announced acquisition of Uber's operations in China in a $35 billion deal. While Didi acquired Uber China’s brand, business operations and data, Uber received 5.89 per cent share of the combined entity, totalling 17.7 per cent economic interest in Didi Chuxing.
“The battle in China had become global. We had sovereign wealth of China being invested in our competition globally. We had American tech companies that were being compelled to invest in our competitor in China. And so China battle had become a global battle,” Mr Kalanick said at the TiE Global Summit here.
Didi is also an investor in Ola, Uber's rival in India, as well as Lyft, it’s competitor in the U.S.
“At some point we realised that we can’t do everything ourselves. So we partnered in China so that we can focus on other interesting things we are doing worldwide like Ubereats, what is going on in India, driverless cars. There are whole bunch of things that we needed to focus on. We could not do everything ourselves, so it is emotional. We did put our heart and soul in that effort (China operations)," he said.
Kalanick, who is on a five-day trip to India, has said the company was losing $200 million a month in China and that merging was a ‘great strategy.’
