Didi restructures to focus on safety and efficiency

China’s ride hailing giant Didi Chuxing announces Wednesday of a corporate restructuring plan following a challenging 2018 in a bid to boost the safety and efficiency aspects of Didi’s operations.

Didi is combining business units into five main groups – ride-sharing business group, automobile solutions platform, community mobility group, finance and operations & legal, according to the announcement. The company sets to pool its operational toolkits, computing powers, and technology to create an all-in-one transportation platform. One illustration for how this works: both Didi’s engineers and Product Managers (PM) are able to work simultaneously on both express and premier algorithms across all verticals.

Two new senior executive positions – Chief Safety Officer and Chief Security Officer – have also been created to see through both user safety and data security of Didi’s platforms, while teams such as emergency response, local government coordination, and external advisory teams are enlarged to spur efficiency and timely response.

Unlike the other super apps out in the market, Didi is laser-focused on transportation. It seeks to become the transportation app that can provide all possible forms of transport for the consumer.

The Beijing-based ride-hailing mammoth operates under a trident structure which consists of ride hailing, automobile, and smart transportation. All of these work seamlessly together for Didi to provide optimal transportation methods for the user, whether it be via ride-hailing, bike-sharing etc. Didi drivers, on the other hand, will have their needs taken care of on Didi’s automobile solutions platform.

Interestingly, making major organizational changes seem to be a popular solution for Chinese tech mammoths. Other than Didi’s latest restructure,  both Tencent and Meituan are in the midst of their own restructures amidst a very difficult 2018.

Didi has faced greater scrutiny over its safety feature after two murders in 3 months; Tencent has seen its market cap falling drastically alongside its gaming woes; Meituan is seeing losses burgeoning after its recent public listing. If all three of them make it through, this method to change the tides might become more common going forward.

Editor: Ben Jiang