(Yicai Global) Oct. 9 -- Chinese shared mobility platform Dida Chuxing submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday for an initial public offering. The company will become China's first publicly traded ride-sharing company if its bid succeeds.

With its two business segments of carpooling and taxi, Beijing-based Dida derives income from 'information services fees' and other means and owns no fleet of vehicles of its own, per the prospectus. Dida ranked first last year in China's carpooling market with a 66.5 percent share, based on number of rides, and claimed the No. 2 spot in the country's online taxi-hailing market.

The mobility platform's gross transaction value was CNY11 billion last year, and underwent 238 percent compound annual growth between 2017 to 2019, its data show.

Dida provided carpooling services in 366 cities across China, had retained 9.8 million private car owners and had served approximately 36.7 million carpooling riders as of June 30, when it also supplied online taxi-hailing services in 86 Chinese cities and formed strategic partnerships with taxi associations in 17 cities. It completed 110 million online taxi-hailing orders last year, realizing CNY172 million in net profit.

The company will continue to consolidate its market leadership in the carpooling sector and drive the digital transformation of the taxi sector, per the prospectus. It will also improve its commercialization ability, enhance its Big Data capacity, as well as enhancing its algorithms, artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies, and spend more to explore strategic alliances, investments and acquisitions.

Dida's management team holds 34.43 percent of the firm's total issued share capital, representing 50 percent of the voting power. Its institutional shareholders include NIO Capital, International Data Corp., JD.Com and various others. NIO Capital, of which electric vehicle maker Nio founder William Li is managing partner, has a 21.6 percent stake.

Editor: Ben Armour