Rivals Join Forces Creating Global Service to Take Down Uber

America's Lyft, China's Didi Kuaidi, Singapore's GrabTaxi and India's Ola are joining forces to provide international service of ride hailing service.

As Forbes reported on Thursday, they announced partnership to bring the companies' product together. The service will provide international travellers a local ride in foreign countries with their domestic app. According to Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer, "This is the next major step in what we're doing in global ride sharing," he said to Forbes, "For us in these geographies–China, Indian, Southeast Asia–partnering is the smartest international expansion strategy."

The global partnership of ride sharing service will bring a serious competition to Uber. Previously in September, Lyft and Didi Kuaidi teamed up to create an Anti-Uber alliance. However, in terms of valuation Uber is still leading with $65 billion, while the four unicon-startups creates a total $25.6 billion in valuation.

China is currently the huge market for ride sharing service and Didi Kuaidi protects its market seriously. The company has successfully operated in more than 300 cities in China, and in Beijing alone it handles more than 1 million requests daily. Didi Kuaidi was established early this year as a merger between two rivals companies to hinder Uber expansion in China.

Wall Street Journal reported that Didi Kuaidi has now served 360 cities in China. The other partners, GrabTaxi is available in cities across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. While Ola is accessible in 102 cities in India.

Together, the partnership between Didi Kuaidi, GrabTaxi, Ola and Lyft outperform Uber that operated in only 350 cities around the world. In the connected system between those four, each service will collect payment from users in their native currency. For instance, Chinese visitor in the U.S. can order Lyft's service using Didi app, and pay Lyft for the service that will transfer the payment to Didi Kuaidi.

The Verge reported this partnership demonstrate the seriousness of these ride sharing companies to take down Uber. In the same time, after protest crippled Uber service in France, a group of Uber drivers in Paris launched their own version of Uber, VTC and ditching Uber.

In the U.S., Uber has just tested its new service in Seattle and Denver. A new color coding technology in Seattle and collaboration with car rental in Denver is an effort to further enhance its service. Currently, Uber is a definitive champion in U.S., but Uber faces a really serious competition from the partnership in global market.