Uber is about to get some unlikely competition from China’s top private car app company. Yongche founder and CEO Herman Zhou tells Bloomberg that the firm plans to expand to New York and San Francisco, and later to other international cities.
Yongche aims to rival the establishment by offering Mandarin-speaking drivers specifically for Chinese visitors to the US, who can book their car through a tie-in with Ctrip, the Chinese online travel giant that it counts as an investor. “Most Chinese don’t speak English and find it difficult to communicate with foreign drivers after they land in another country,” Zhou says.
Yongche currently services 57 cities across China and Hong Kong; it claims to have over 2 million active users and a fleet of 50,000 drivers. Zhou says that he wants to expand to a further 150 cities next year, including Los Angeles and Boston, as well as London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo.
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➤ China’s Uber Targets U.S. With Mandarin-Speaking Drivers [Bloomberg] | Via Tech In Asia
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