Baidu adds another ridesharing app to its portfolio with series C investment in Tiantian Yongche

Baidu was largely left out of the taxi app race as Tencent-backed Didi Dache and Alibaba-backed Kuaidi Dache vied for supremacy and ultimately merged. But the country’s favorite search engine has no intention of falling behind when it comes to ridesharing.

Tiantian Yongche, a carpool and ridesharing app, announced yesterday it has received an undisclosed series C round of funding led by Baidu, followed by Sequoia Capital. The company claims its valuation is now close to US$200 million, according to QQ Tech.

The announcement comes on the heels of Baidu’s lead investment into 51yongche, another like-minded carpooling app. The series C funding, which was announced just a couple days earlier, was reportedly worth "tens of millions" of USD. Sequoia Capital is also an investor in 51yongche.

And let’s not forget the elephant in the room. Baidu in December invested in Uber, the international car-booking juggernaut and the most-funded transportation startup in the world. The amount of that investment was never disclosed by some media reported the deal was worth US$600 million.

Baidu also reportedly invested in Yidao Yongche last fall. The car rental and ride-booking service was reportedly in talks with Uber concerning a possible merger.

Tiantian Yongche currently operates in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Chengdu, and a handful of smaller cities. The startup received its series A round in September last year and its series B in December.

So is Baidu hedging its bets by investing in a wide range of competitors, or does it have a grand plan to consolidate all of these companies into a single cohesive network? We’ve reached out to the company for more info and will update this article if we hear back.