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ride-hailing’s slump

  • January 27, 2017
  • January 27, 2017

Alphabet beats Microsoft. A unicorn's latest acquisition. Internet users in China.

Hola,

It’s mind-boggling to see how Uber and China’s Didi Chuxing completely dominate the ride-hailing space in terms of funding.

As pointed out by our senior mobility analyst Kerry Wu in his weekly auto tech newsletter, these two companies have taken the majority of dollars in the space every year since 2013. (Sign up for Kerry’s no-B.S. weekly newsletter on all things future of transport here.)

Also of note, the ride-hailing space slumped this year and was down ~20% in both deals and dollar terms, with India’s Ola even considering a downround amid skepticism over its valuation.

There are at least 8 ride-hailing companies currently valued at $1B+ globally (Uber, Didi, Lyft, Ola, Grab, BlaBlaCar, Careem, and Go-Jek). Another Brazilian startup called 99 just raised a $100M Series C from Didi itself. It will be interesting to see if any of the other companies in the ride-hailing pack survive as stand-alone companies with Uber and Didi scarfing up the dollars and investing in competitors globally (and in each other).

Have a great weekend. 
Marcelo
@ballve

P.S. If you’re interested in going deep in an industry and reaching decision makers and dealmakers everyday, we’re hiring senior analysts with experience managing teams and research in industries including financial services, healthcare, and CPG/retail. Apply here.

This week in data:

  • $3.7B: Cisco Systems announced it would acquire enterprise software company AppDynamics for $3.7B, making it one of the largest VC-backed M&A exits of all time. We looked at the company’s fundraising and valuation history to date and see that Cisco paid roughly twice the company’s highest valuation in private markets.

  • 3,350: In 2016, there were more than 3,350 global tech exits. The second half of the year saw more than 60 IPOs by companies such as Nutanix, The Trade Desk, and Apptio. We’ll be diving into M&A and IPO trends over the past few years in our Global Tech Exits briefing on January 31st. Sign up here.
  • $100M: The amount raised by Beijing-based produce service MissFresh in a second tranche of Series C funding. Investors in the round included China Growth Capital, Tencent Holdings, and Yuan Yi Investment. We previously looked at financing trends in food delivery and how they broke down between meal delivery and grocery delivery startups.
  • ~$2B: Q4’16 financials show Alphabet beat Microsoft in year-end revenue by roughly $2B ($26.06B vs $24.1B, respectively). Both companies surpassed Alibaba’s revenue of $7.6B, but Alibaba on its own showed a 54% year-over-year increase in revenue.
  • $800M: Verily (fka Google Life Sciences), Alphabet’s health-focused subsidiary, received an $800M investment from Singapore-based sovereign wealth fund Temasek. Formed in 2015, Verily is one of two Alphabet subsidiaries dedicated to life sciences research, according to our Google Strategy Teardown.
  • 25: Warby Parker announced its plans to open 25 retail stores in the US in 2017. The company opened its first physical store in 2013 in New York City. While many traditional retailers are increasingly shifting to online operations, Warby Parker and a host of other e-commerce startups are reversing the process by opening physical stores. We also see a number of startups working to transform brick-and-mortar retail in order to keep up with rising e-commerce competitors.

  • $60M-$80M: Messaging platform Kik acquired Israel-based live social platform and mobile app Rounds in a deal that is said to range between $60M and $80M. Kik was recently featured on our global unicorn market map. It is also a popular messaging app that a number of companies are building chatbots for.

  • 20,000: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 20,000 points for the first time, after gaining about 150 points this past Wednesday. Boeing, IBM, and Goldman Sachs contributed the most gains.
  • $70M: The amount raised by cybersecurity company SentinelOne from investors including Redpoint Ventures, Sound Ventures, and Data Collective. SentinelOne is one of the private companies at the intersection of cybersecurity and connected hardware, as seen in our IoT and IIoT cybersecurity map.
  • 731 million: The number of internet users in China, according to this report. Of that number, 95.1% access the internet from mobile devices, mainly phones. WeChat remains the most used app in the country, developed by Tencent — which was also the most active Chinese investor in US startups through Q3’16.
  • $4 million: Atlassian, the publicly traded productivity software company, announced quarterly results of $149 million in revenue and said it expected its newly acquired Trello product to generate $4 million in sales for the company in 2017. That’s something of a surprisingly low number, given Atlassian reportedly paid $425 million for Trello.
  • $7.7 million: The average top-tier online publication — including the BBC, NBC, Bloomberg, ESPN, The New York Times, and Financial Times — generated just $7.7M in revenue from third-party platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Snap, etc.) in H1’16, according to this source which surveyed a number of publishers. This translates to ~14% of their overall revenue in the first half of 2016. An average of $773,567 was generated using YouTube while Facebook accounted for an average of $560,144.
  • 3.5 years: Former Google executive Hugo Barra has departed Chinese unicorn Xiaomi after 3.5 years as the head of the Xiaomi Global subsidiary, where he has been leading Xiaomi’s global expansion efforts. Barra will now be joining Facebook as head of the company’s VR efforts.

This report was created with data from CB Insights’ emerging technology insights platform, which offers clarity into emerging tech and new business strategies through tools like: If you aren’t already a client, sign up for a free trial to learn more about our platform.