Didi Chuxing, China’s ride-hailing giant, has said it will start measuring success in terms of safety rather than scale and growth, after the second murder of a female passenger in four months sparked backlash from government authorities and users.
Didi – which is the world’s largest ride-hailing platform by both valuation and riders served – issued a remorseful statement on Tuesday, saying: "We see clearly this is because our vanity overtook our original beliefs. We raced non-stop riding on the force of breathless expansion and capital through these few years; but this has no meaning in such a tragic loss of life. Throughout the company we start to question if we are doing the right thing; or even whether we have the right values. There is an enormous amount of self-doubt, guilt and soul-searching. The only thing we can do at this moment of pain is to face the pain and take on our responsibility. Not a single second shall be lost in solving the problems with our full effort. To bring back what we were here for from day one, this is the only meaningful kind of condolence we could offer to the victim."
It said that it will stop using “scale and growth as our measurement of success”, instead making safety “the single most important performance indicator.”