China’s Didi Chuxing is already well-known for making investments, but this time around the ride-sharing company has stepped beyond backing companies in its core industry with its latest deal.
That’s because Didi has backed RenRenChe, China-based online peer-to-peer car marketplace, via a strategic investment that is confirmed at $200 million. It’s not clear what it’s valuation is post-money, but in its last round, a year ago, the company was valued at $500 million, so doing some straight math and assuming RenRenChe has not raised at a down-round, it’s now at least $700 million.
Didi is valued at over $50 billion and its on-demand car empire stretches beyond China, where it remains in the process of buying Uber’s local business.
The firm has links in Europe, South America, India, Southeast Asia, the U.S. and the Middle East thanks to investments in the likes of Taxify, 99, Ola, Grab, Lyft and Careem. With the RenRenChe deal, Uber is adding peer-to-peer trading to its stack of services in China, which spans basic taxi services, buses, test driving, dock-less bikes and more.
Three-year-old RenRenChe is a classified site that allows car owners to sell directly to other consumers. It covers over 80 Chinese cities, and it claims 100,000 car listings.
As part of the deal, Didi said it will look to integrate RenRenChe’s service into its apps, while it will contribute to helping with R&D and technical development. A spokesperson confirmed that there is no plan to take the integration overseas with Didi’s global partners, however.
RenRenChe’s other investors include Redpoint, Tencent and Shunwei Capital, among others. The company, according to Crunchbase, has raised about $460 million to date (including this latest round).