Cheng Wei is a Chinese entrepreneur, founder and CEO of DiDi, the largest transportation platform in China.
Cheng Wei worked as an executive assistant in a massage company. A year later, he applied for Alibaba as a vendor for its B2B e-commerce service in 2005. He worked for Alibaba by six years. Wei became the sales director for the northern region of China. He then moved to China on the Alipay online payment platform, where he gained a reputation as a talented manager despite his age,
In 2012, Wei resigned from Alibabá and founded Beijing Orange Technology. In that year he presented DiDi Dache, the first version of its transport service. In 2014, he hired Jean Liu, a former director of Goldman Sachs Asia as his company’s COO. In February 2015, the company merged with its rival Kuaidi Dache. In August 2016, DiDi acquired all the shares of Uber’s Chinese division, including its brand, commercial operations, and data for its service in China.
DiDi has become one of the most valued startups in the world. The company diversified and now offers tax service, private car, rental assistance, business solutions, and shared bike service.
Wei says that DiDi now seeks to use big data and artificial intelligence to maximize the efficiency of transport tools. Wei advocates a more intensive use of artificial intelligence by China.
