All the early Chinese ridesharing startups lost money, and the ones that arrived late to the market or tried to replicate Uber’s original strategy of starting with the more expensive but rarer black cars were critically handicapped. But Didi was scrappier than most of its rivals. When Yaoyao Taxi, a rival backed by Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital, won an exclusive contract to recruit drivers at the Beijing airport, Didi employees descended on the city’s biggest railway station to promote their app. Instead of imitating competitors and giving away smartphones to drivers, an expensive
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