Meet The Woman Behind China’s Largest Ride-Sharing Service

One of Jean Liu’s first acts after becoming president of the Beijing-based taxi-hailing service Didi Dache in February 2015 was engineering the surprise merger with its biggest competitor, Kuaidi Dache, to create the formidable transportation service now known as Didi Chuxing. In less than a year and a half, she has increased head count from 700 people to 5,000 as the company adds bus and ride-sharing offerings. She’s also lined up partnerships with Grab (Singapore), Ola Cabs (India), and Lyft (the U.S.) to offer Didi passengers in-app booking with these services and raised $3 billion for further expansion—all while fending off Uber’s advance into China.

Fast Company: How have you managed so much change in such a short time?
Jean Liu: Our principle is that we send “old” people—people who have been with us for more than two years—to try new things. So when we start a new business line, we send people who are already familiar with our team culture. The communication cost is much lower, since that person knows the company well. He also has to have the charm to get a great team together. [/interview]

So finding the right employees is a priority when you’re growing this quickly.
To be a great company you need not just the best product but also the best people. We aim to get the best young talent from many different fields and make sure that they have the feeling that they can have a huge impact. The average age of our 5,000 employees is 26

What are the biggest obstacles facing Didi in China?
Less than 10% of the population has cars. The government has regulations that essentially ban cars from the road, because China’s population density is so high. So we are building a platform that will offer transportation to everyone, with black cars, taxis, [carpooling option] Hitch, and even buses.