Apple Just Gave This Man USD1 Billion Dollars
Here's everything you need to know about him. For starters, he is only 33.
By Sadho Ram — 15 May 2016, 02:36 PM
This is Cheng Wei, a 33-year-old who, through his focused determination and quick growth, made Apple take note of his e-hailing firm Didi Chuxing, which happens to be one of the most watched online taxi booking companies in the world
He started his ride-hailing company, which was named Didi Dache (later merged with Kuaidi Dache to form Didi Kuaidi which then became Didi Chuxing) back in June 2012 at the mere age of 29
Prior to that, he was with Alibaba.
But because he would often miss his flights as he couldn't get a cab during his frequent business trips between Beijing and Alibaba's Hangzhou HQ, he left Alibaba and entered China's chaotic ride-hailing app market.
From 2012 to today, Cheng Wei's company has come a long way
So much so that, today Didi Chuxing (backed by Tencent and Alibaba), is valued at USD20 billion, more than double its closest ride-hailing app rival in mainland China, Uber China, which is valued at USD8 billion.
Cheng Wei's company now operates in 400 cities compared to Uber in only 45 cities.
In fact, just to give you an idea of how huge this man's company in China is, it took Uber 5 years since its launch in 2009 to complete a billion rides worldwide early this year in January. In comparison, Cheng Wei's company had 1.43 billion rides in 2015 alone in China.
Which effectively makes it "the world's number one in rideshare market," despite the fact that the only country it was and is operating out of is China.
And here's something interesting, which may sound unbelievable, but despite the fact that his company today enables over one billion car rides each year, Cheng Wei still hasn't learned how to drive
But it only proves that you don’t have to be a master at your field to start.
You only need to solve an issue big enough that people would pay money for. Which he effectively did by staying focused — only operating in China, and being mission focused — to help China be more mobile.
And that's precisely what has attracted Apple to invest USD1 billion on Cheng Wei.
"With an unprecedented USD1 billion investment in Didi Chuxing, Apple didn't just buy a piece of China's biggest ride-hailing service. It also became a stakeholder in China's growing tech sector at a time when the Cupertino, Calif., company needs goodwill from Beijing more than ever," reads this LA Times feature.
Cheng Wei's 4-year, USD20-billion, turbo-charged story, as Bali-based entrepreneur Roger James Hamilton wrote in his Facebook post about the investment, has one underlying message:
"Whether you are just getting started, in the early days of your business, or facing both external and internal growing pains, stay in the right gear at the right speed at the right time, and you can always accelerate out of trouble."
