It's too sudden! Ali and Lei Jun withdraw their investment! Many people have used this app
Editor: Cheng Peng
According to the enterprise investigation, on January 22, Wuhan Yuanguang Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliated company of the domestic real-time bus product "The Car is Coming", underwent industrial and commercial changes, Alibaba (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Shunwei Venture Capital Co., Ltd. controlled by Lei Jun and Wuhan Optics Valley Coffee Venture Capital Co., Ltd. withdrew from the ranks of shareholders, and at the same time, a number of directors of the company changed.
According to public information, Wuhan Yuanguang Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2010 and is located in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, which is an enterprise mainly engaged in research and experimental development, with a registered capital of 745,452 yuan.
As the first enterprise to go deep into the field of real-time query of public transportation, "Bus Coming" is the first to realize the visualization of "bus arrival time" and "bus arrival distance", and users can carry out basic route query, predict vehicle arrival time, vehicle positioning, and remind people to get on and off the bus. Shao Lingshuang, founder & CEO of "The Car is Coming", and many of his team members graduated from Peking University with a major in computer science. Shao Lingshuang once hoped to develop "The Car is Coming" into a multi-field, international company.
According to official statistics, "the car is coming" has covered 448 cities across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Shaoxing, etc., with 1.5 million daily active users announced in 2015, covering 1 million public transport vehicles, processing 2 billion bus positioning data in real time every day, and 20 million user query requests per day. In 2017, the total number of users announced exceeded 60 million.
During the period of 2013~2019, "Chelai" has successively received a total of more than 5,000 US dollars in financing from Zhen Fund, Lei Jun, Alibaba, CBC Broadband Capital, Optics Valley Venture Coffee, Hongdao Capital, and Living Water Capital. Among them, Alibaba participated in its Series A and B financing, and Lei Jun, Xu Xiaoping, Yuan Yue and others participated in millions of angel investments.
Lei Jun once believed that "the car is coming" solves the "hard demand" of public transportation. Liu Wei, partner of Broadband Capital, believes that the in-depth exploration of "the car is coming" in the field of public transportation, mobile payment and O2O in the future has given investors enough room for imagination.
However, since then, there has been no news of financing from "The Car is Coming".
Previously, there was a view that the number of Chinese people traveling each time exceeded 100 million, and the bus itself had the characteristics of high-frequency rigid demand, and the market valuation reached 10 billion. The "car is coming" can improve the efficiency of user travel query by taking advantage of the pain point of public transport information asymmetry, and take the lead in seizing this "blue ocean", which will help provide reference for road construction and line network optimization for the urban public transport system in the long run.
According to the statistics of Southern Metropolis Daily, at present, the independent APP that focuses on bus query includes software such as "Pocket Bus", "Bus is Coming", "Where is the Car - Real-time Bus", and the cumulative number of downloads of the "Car Coming" APP has reached 350 million.
However, as more and more cities have launched digital systems integrating query, positioning and even payment functions such as real-time bus query screens and subway APPs, coupled with the high penetration rate of AutoNavi, Baidu and Tencent map software, the "car is coming" APP based on a single mode of public transport is becoming more and more replaceable. At the same time, users have also complained about "not allowed", "the car has passed the station and did not remind me", "advertisements are overflowing, automatic jumping" and other complaints. How to improve the bus and subway travel planning function while improving the user experience and participating in market competition is the challenge that this company needs to face.
Editor|Cheng Peng, Du Hengfeng
Proofreading|Liu Xiaoying
Cover image source: Visual China (data map unrelated to picture and text)
The daily economic news is synthesized from Southern Metropolis Daily (reporter: Fu Xiaoling), 21st Century Business Herald (Tao Li, Dong Jingyi), and Qichacha
National Business Daily