Chinese ride-hailing app, Didi has received approval from authorities to sign-up new customes, almost 18 months after a probe into its data tracking policies. Chinese regulators fined the company in 2021 for data security violations amid the sweeping crackdown on China’s tech sector launched in the same year, which wiped billions of dollars off the value of homegrown tech giants. Didi was one of the high-profile profile targets of the crackdown. However, the latest move comes as a sign that China’s strike againts the tech giants is now coming to an end.
“For more than a year, our company has cooperated with the government’s cybersecurity review, seriously dealt with the security issues found in the review, and carried out a comprehensive rectification,” Didi said in a statement posted on its Weibo account. “With the approval of the Internet Security Review Office, new user registration on ‘Didi Chuxing’ will resume immediately,” the company added. Didi’s flagship ride-hailing and other apps are to be back on China’s domestic app stores.
The ride-hailing company was launched in 2012 in China. The company was backed by established players like Alibaba, Tencent and SoftBank Group. Following regulatory crackdown, company’s 25 mobile apps were forced to be taken down from app stores. The tech giant was fined of $1.2 billion over data-security breaches and it also suspended registrations of new users suspended. It was the largest regulatory fine on a Chinese tech company after Alibaba and Meituan were fined $2.75 billion and $527 million, respectively, in 2021.
Didi was also forced to delist from the New York Stock Exchange-traded company in June last year, in than a year after its market debut. Some experts also looked at authorities’ actions as punishment for the company’s decision to go public overseas instead of in China. Within China, the company’s retrenchment paved a way for new players to fill its place such as Cao Cao Mobility and T3 Chuxing.
