Didi Chuxing is still dealing with the unfortunate incident after another passenger died using their service. This triggered public criticisms online and a call to tighten the safety regulations of the company. After all, it is one of the largest ride-sharing companies in the country.
According to Forbes, several major cities ordered Didi to overhaul its management and assure the safety of their passengers. This was after the death of a 20-year-old woman who was reportedly raped and murdered while in Didi's car-pooling service Hitch. As we previously reported, it was the second murder case in the past three months
In result of this, the company issued a public apology, two of their senior executives were fired, and Hitch was suspended indefinitely. However, the company is still facing immense regulatory pressure and a public backlash that analysts believe may lead to a long-lasting damage.
A letter titled "Our Deepest Apologies" was written by Didi founder Cheng Wei and President Jean saying, "The tragedy reminded us we have walked this path without enough respect nor humility." The two added, "We see clearly this is because our vanity overtook our original beliefs. We raced non-stop riding on the force of breathless expansion and capital through these few years, but this has no meaning in such a tragic loss of life."
But this apology has not done anything to lessen the anger with people criticizing Didi for paying lip service to the passenger safety and pledging to delete the company app. The total number of Didi Chuxing app downloads had dropped to 61st place from 11th in China iOS store. This was according to the analytics platform of App Annie.
On Weibo, prominently known in China as Twitter, several celebrities like actress Wang Xiaochen have shown themselves deleting the Didi App. She even captioned the post with "Goodbye" and garnered 290,000 likes in the last week.
Didi Chuxing Plans a Public Offering
The company is valued at over $56 billion in a recent financing round and they are planning to do an initial public offering with this fact. Didi Chuxing has been trying to fend rising competition in Japan off. On the other hand, they are expanding in overseas markets such as Japan and Mexico, where the company recently launched its ride-hailing company services.
As people all know, the company has several services like providing shuttle buses, premium limousines, express cars, bike sharing and food delivery to over 550 million users. Even the Hitch service alone has over one billion rides over the past three years. In the end, the two consecutive deaths of the passengers will no doubt affect the investors' confidence.
