Didi just threw 50 shades of shade at Uber

Didi Kuaidi, China’s top ride-hailing startup, took a shot at Uber today by saying it will soon be doing more monthly bookings in China than Uber does worldwide.

Referring to “gross merchandise volume” – that’s the value of all the rides taken – the Chinese startup this afternoon stated that “Didi’s monthly GMV in China is expected to overtake global monthly GMV of its main peer before Q3 2016.” That means you, Uber.

That was accompanied by a new statistic showing that Didi – which covers taxi rides as well as private cars – saw US$800 million in GMV in January alone. That was boosted by 10 million new active users in the first month of the new year. The app has over 250 million users in the country.

Going for a ride

For a sense of scale, Lyft was aiming at hitting US$1.2 billion worth of rides in 2015. So Didi will soon be racking up more GMV each month than Lyft does all year.

Didi is already ahead on the sheer number of rides.

There’s no official data from Uber, though Reuters saw figures last summer showing that Uber was set for US$10.84 billion in bookings in 2015, rising to an estimated US$$26.12 billion this year. We’re not sure what numbers Didi thinks it has about Uber, but if it’s referencing the same data then it’s positing itself as doing well over US$2 billion worth of rides each month later this year in order to beat Uber’s projected tally.

Boasting aside, it’s inevitable that Didi will beat Uber in this metric at some point. Didi is already ahead on the sheer number of rides, seeing 1.43 billion rides booking in 2015, way beyond the one billion that Uber has notched since its launch in 2009.

Making money

The baiting didn’t end there. Didi’s statement added that its service is “operating above the break-even point” in half of its 400 Chinese cities. In contrast, a series of leaks of purported Uber stats show that the Silicon Valley giant is losing a lot of money as it burns investment cash.

As interesting as the numbers are, it’s all smoke and mirrors until the day both Didi and Uber list and are required to release full financial statements. Last year Didi said that nearly 30 percent of its bookings are for regulated taxis, for which Uber has no direct analog. Ride-hailing companies generally make a lot less money from regulated cab rides than they do from private cars.

The difficulties of a direct comparison are exacerbated by the presence of subsidies and incentives for drivers, which differ between companies. That impacts how soon a service can make a profit.

China’s ride-hailing battle is a war of words as much as a street race.