DiDi Global, China’s largest ride-hailing company, encountered a significant service disruption on Monday when its ride-hailing application experienced a “systems malfunction,” affecting millions of users in major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. Users reported the app breakdown around 10:30 p.m. local time (14:30 GMT) on Monday evening, leaving them unable to book rides for over an hour.
Responding to the widespread user complaints on its official Weibo social media account, DiDi Global promptly acknowledged the system-wide malfunction and apologized. The company stated that it was urgently working to resolve the issue. Weibo posts with time stamps and user locations indicated that the outage affected multiple provinces, from eastern Zhejiang to northern Jilin.
DiDi Global, a comprehensive mobility platform, offers various services beyond ride-hailing, including food delivery, intra-city freight, automobile, and financial services. Despite the disruption, the company’s DiDi-Rider app began allowing users to make bookings by midnight. However, users continued to experience slow-downs and intermittent issues, leading to extended wait times.
In the third quarter alone, DiDi Global served an average of 31.3 million people daily, highlighting its significant user base in China. The company, headquartered in Beijing, boasts over 550 million users and 15 million drivers, operating in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan.
DiDi Global’s services expanded internationally after acquiring China Uber in 2016. The company has since extended its transportation offerings to Africa and Russia. However, it faced regulatory scrutiny in China last summer, resulting in a hefty fine of over $1 billion. The Chinese government imposed the fine for network security and data protection violations following a year-long investigation by the nation’s cyberspace administration agency.
As DiDi Global works to address the recent service disruption, the incident highlights the challenges that technology platforms face in maintaining seamless operations, particularly when serving large user bases across diverse regions.
