Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

When Little Ma heard about this, he couldn’t help but let out a few curses. It was unclear whether he was cursing Chen Yansen, Li Yanhong, or both of them.

But Fast Taxi’s market performance was a pleasant surprise.

With average daily orders exceeding five million and a transaction volume of 140 million yuan, the platform’s annual turnover could reach 50 billion yuan.

By then, Fast Taxi’s valuation would soar to between 8 and 12 billion US dollars. If they could defeat DiDi Dache, it wouldn’t be a stretch to optimistically estimate a valuation surpassing 12 billion US dollars.

In other words, the value of the equity held by Penguin would skyrocket from the initial 130 million US dollars to 900 million US dollars, a 592.3% return on investment.

What Ma Wenteng could figure out, Ma Liyun, Zhu Xiaohu, Yu Heng, and the others could naturally figure out as well.

All at once, investment firms like Ah Li, Penguin, DST, Jinsha Venture Capital, Huake, Goldman Sachs, and Huaxin started calling, asking Chen Yansen if he needed capital.

Fast Taxi’s accounts were still flush with cash, so Chen Yansen didn’t agree, but he didn’t refuse either. He simply used the opportunity to sound out their offers and prepare for the next round of financing.

DiDi Dache’s counterattack was fierce. Its daily order volume grew at an incredible rate, increasing from just over one million to more than 1.3 million in only three days.

But to Li Yanhong’s frustration, after entering the Northeast and South China markets, Fast Taxi also expanded rapidly, still managing to hold on to 85% of the market share.

DiDi’s market share didn’t budge an inch; in fact, it even dropped by another 0.2%.

The ride-hailing war between Fast Taxi and DiDi Dache not only stunned people within the industry but also left users completely dumbfounded.

From May to mid-September, a full five months, the two sides had collectively burned through 3 billion in subsidies. At the current rate, that number was projected to soar to 5 billion by the end of the year!

There was no shortage of industry players who privately wanted to enter the ride-hailing race, but almost none dared to actually jump in.

After all, without a billion in cash reserves, you wouldn’t even last three months before being jointly crushed by the subsidy war between Fast Taxi and DiDi Dache.

Competitors like Yaoyao Zhaoche, Yidao Car Rental, and 365 Yueche were washed away by the massive waves and left for dead on the beach without even making a splash.

Who would dare enter the market now?

Now that BAT, state-owned capital, and foreign capital had all entered the fray, it would be nearly impossible to find investors, even if you managed to develop a product.

「Meanwhile.」

「In front of the School of Business in Hu City’s Fengxian District.」

Logically, since the School of Business was located in the suburbs, there shouldn’t have been many taxis around.

But after the subsidy war between Fast Taxi and DiDi restarted, the instant per-order discount for returning customers went back to 12 yuan, and the drivers’ subsidy for accepting an order rose to 4 yuan.

Not even counting the platform’s cut, a driver could earn at least 16 yuan for a single ride.

Especially near the School of Business, students operated under the principle that it was a waste not to take a freebie. Even to get to the snack street just two kilometers away, they would take a taxi there and back.

The passengers paid nothing, and the driver could earn 32 yuan for the round trip!

The situation downtown was much the same. Older folks would call a taxi just to go downstairs to buy groceries.

When you could get a free ride, who would bother walking?

Even though the daily losses exceeded ten million yuan, Chen Yansen felt it was worth it: the capacity of the ride-hailing market was expanding, and users were subconsciously developing the habit of hailing cars online.

In the long run, this would force all taxi drivers to install the app, because passengers hailing cabs from the street would become increasingly rare. If they didn’t use Fast Taxi, they’d have no customers.

But what Li Yanhong didn’t know was that, although the Gray Studios had quieted down significantly after a special operation by the Yanjing Inspection Institute and the ”Little Calf” software had been banned, a new ghost order software called ”Big Golden Bull” had burst onto the scene after twenty days of silence. It seemed to have precisely pinpointed a system vulnerability in DiDi Dache.