I dont consider myself a journalist and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . One of my friends invested in uber a number of years ago. It was at a 3 billion market value. I said he was going to lose all of his money, no ridehailing company can be worth 3 billion. In fact, it turned out to be worth staggering sums of money and now it is publicly trading. I had the same reaction when i heard of didi, an uberlike company in china. I did not think it would catch on but i was wrong again. Today it is the single largest ridehailing company in the world. The person running the company is a young woman from china who rose up because of her hard work and intellect and now she is the president of didi. It is an incredible success story. She is one of the best known Women Business leaders in china, an extremely intelligent person who is clearly going to make the company even more successful as she continues to lead it. We are here with jean liu, the president of didi, the largest mobile Transportation Company in china and one of the largest in the world. When didi was started in 2012, it wasnt the first or only company doing this, is that right . Jean there were 30 players doing the exact same thing. David did you have anything that was better than the other 29 . What were your advantages over the other companies . Jean we worked really hard. We worked really hard. For example, there were a lot of very strong competitors, right . There was big competition and we sat down together to think about what is our strategy and how can we provide better value . We launched four business lines in three months in 2015. There were a lot of moments that we worked really hard and tried to catch up. David there is another company in the u. S. Called uber, which you are probably familiar with. When uber started, it grew quickly in the u. S. And other parts of the world, and also had a division in china. In many places, uber said, we will roll over our competition. But in one country, they were not able to do that, and that was china. In china, you ultimately came to a deal where, in effect, you merged but became the Parent Company and uber is an investor in your company. Is that right . Are you also an investor in uber . Jean yes. Small. David your company has grown to the point how many riders do you have a day on your main taxi hailing business . Jean we have hundreds of millions of users every month. Hundreds of millions. David you have more users every month than uber . Jean thats right. David today, what are your other businesses . Jean talking about uber, i have to say, we are thankful for the competition, it makes us better and stronger. When uber first came to china, their war chest was bigger than our market cap. So because of competition, it helped us to push ourselves to launch different product lines. Starting from taxi, we launched private cars and different prices, black premier, and express line. And then later we had a social carpooling product. Now we have bicycles and electric bicycles. We probably offer more than 10 services to our users. David most Chinese Companies that are Technology Leaders like alibaba, tencent, baidu, have dominant positions in china, but so far, they have not taken dominant positions outside of china. Now, you are taking positions outside of china and building your business outside. Have you been very successful outside of china so far . Jean i wouldnt call you know, we are very successful and we see very encouraging results. We are in brazil, mexico, colombia, in the latin market, and we are just entering into the australia and japan markets. David how do you have to change everything for the different markets, are there different qualities you have to bring to the table . How do you make your Service Better for each of these countries . Jean i think we provide our service to the local people by combining two things, one is our Global Technology architecture, and then local innovation. We tailor make products for different markets. A product in brazil and a product in japan are very different. Unlike other companies who do copypaste, cookie cutting for all the markets. It is a very different approach. David you mentioned some countries you are in, you are not in the u. S. Are you prohibited from being in the United States . Jean its a very crowded market. David its not likely to happen anytime soon . Jean we hope if we can bring user value, we will consider it. If it is the same product and only compete on pricing, we dont see the point. David the United States and china have a trade dispute that has been going on for a while. Does that affect your business . Jean to be honest, it doesnt really impact our business because we are, you know, we are supported by local passengers and drivers. However, i think we have benefited from trading and sharing over years. It is unfortunate to see this, and, of course, we hope it can get resolved. David if i am an american tourist and i want to use your service in china, is it easy to do . Do you have to speak chinese . Jean you dont at all, we have a great English Version. We have a great English Version and actually, a lot of our employees, colleagues, are from overseas, from different countries. Especially now that we have a global business. David uber is now publicly traded and losing a fair amount of money every year, a billion dollars plus per year or more. Are you thinking of going public and are you losing money or making money . Jean well, we do have a specific ipo timetable, lets put it that way. Back to the uber point, i am sure it is temporary and they will get through it. They are very diligent and experienced. For us, we think profitability is the natural result of the value you create. There are two things in china that are different from other markets. First, rideshare is cheaper than car ownership. That is a huge Value Creation you provide to users. Secondly, in china, we are going through a transition that people, you know, people urge for a life quality, for better lives, and people want to spend more money. David the average age of your customers is below 30 . Jean 20 to 30. Actually, lots of them are students from college. David people who are 50, 60, 70 are not your target audience as much . Jean they are, actually, and we definitely want to make our technology more accessible to everyone. David back to the question of profitability, you are profitable . Jean in our core business. Yes. We are. David one of the businesses that is not your core business, i think you spun it off, was your automatic driving, autonomous. Why did you spin it off and when do you think autonomous driving will actually be very common . Jean actually, you know, i think it will take huge commitment for Autonomous Technology to mature technologywise and also commercialwise. And i think for a company to succeed in it you need to be prepared to spend money and Human Resources into it. We want to attract the top talent and make it independent. So people feel we want to join this as a young company. At the same time, we are at an advantage because we run the largest network. For a geosensing Autonomous Car to run, it is easy. In california, it could be easier than in beijing. We have a huge amount of data, so that makes us feel like we are in an advantage in that way. David how many years away . Jean a long time. David five years . Jean 5 to 10 years. David you spun that off because it will not be profitable in the near future. Jean we are investing in it. David when you joined the company, you had a market value of 500 million more or less. Lets say i want to invest at a 500 million valuation today, could you do that today . Jean not really, no. Your father is well known in the Business World in china. Say you should go into a computer thing . Not really. Peking university and majored in Computer Science. At peking university, is it like the United States where there are more men than women in Computer Science . Were 36 students. 30 or men. Presumablyuated and did well. You decided to go to harvard. Was that hard to get into . It was hard. You got a masters in Computer Science. Did you find harvard easier or harder than you thought . I wouldnt call it easier or harder. It was more interesting. My key purpose of going abroad was to see the world and it was totally rewarding. Your english is perfect. English . You get this we started to learn english from elementary school. If you have a good english teacher at school, you get pretty ok, but i would not, english perfect. Better than mine. To ad you decide to go great chinese firm like Goldman Sachs . Toit was almost accidental join goldman. In researchh i goldman and i thought it was fascinating. I decided i wanted to apply for a fulltime job. That is why i ended up in the Investment Banking division in hong kong. He went to hong kong and stayed there for 12 years and became a managing director. Most people would say life cannot be much better than that. You are on your way up to the very top. Why did you choose to leave . A lot of people ask me that, especially when i resigned from goldman. Believesaid i cannot you are doing the taxi company. When i first moved back to beijing, i found myself struggling in the street with my three young children. You need tobeijing have a license. It is hard to get it is a lottery system. And it is really hard to hail a taxi. That company was started in 2012 . 2013. Et the founder in i wanted to make an investment at the beginning. I tried three times and failed three times. On behalf of goldman or yourself . On behalf of goldman. And he said we dont need your money or what . Yeah. You know the Due Diligence process from goldman is quite strict. I always wanted to build something. To be ang seemed to me huge impact. Inhow big was the company 2014 when you joined . It was a valued around 500 million u. S. Dollars. When i joined, a lot of my friends or my family advised me not. China is very competitive. You say to people who advise you not to join now . Jean i hesitated. And i sat down with him said if you do not let me invest in you, let me join you, he did not back off, which is surprising to me. I hesitated when people advised me not to. We went to to bet together with a group of seven people. It was a soulsearching trip and after that i made up my mind. David what position did you join at . Jean chief operating officer. David you came from Goldman Sachs, but it sexy were not managing hundreds of people, so ut atid you b you were not measuring managing hundreds of people. So how did you come to become coo . Who are the big investors in the early days . Jean there are a number of them. Have tencent, alibaba, also tim cook. We have a lot of very wellknown financial investors. David where they large Institutional Investors . Jean a mix. David when you joined, it had a market valuation of 500 million. Lets suppose i say i like what you said and i would like to invest at a 500 500 million evaluation. Could i do that today . David no. Running one of the Biggest Companies in china. How do you keep that from going to your head . Jean it is a very challenging job. I now know it is about people. It is about safety. David how do you get to work . Do you take one of your jean yes. David if you do not like the service, what do you say . Jean we have this assignment that we have to drive as well. Did it with my colleague and we pick up this young guy. My colleague introduced to him this is our president and we would want to survey you. He did not seem impressed. He said whatever. He said why dont you give me some coupon if you want to survey me . I guess im not a celebrity. David you are widely viewed as one of the most powerful women in business in china, around the world, and not just a prominent woman, a prominent executive. You are running one of the Biggest Companies in china. How do you keep that from going to your head . Jean good question. I have a very tough job. It is very challenging. When i first joined this company, i thought his i thought it is a technology company. Now i know it is about people and safety. Last year, two young girls got killed. It was devastating. For all of the senior executives, i. E. , the 20 fiveyearolds, we got together and said what is the next step . David was the death because the driver did something wrong . Jean the driver was a criminal. David how do you screen those kind of people . Jean we launched more than 40 product features about safety facial recognition, route sharing. There are 40 of them. The challenge part is not about how committed we can be for safety. There are a lot of dilemmas that i can ask our data scientists for an answer to. It is a social problem. Allow we face is we is do we allow drivers to fate to reject drunk passengers . There a lot of problems with drunk passengers. A lot of drivers complained to us saying can we reject this drunk passenger . Do we allow it . Put up a nationwide consultation for him and asked for feedback. 80 of them thinks we should. It was a surprise to us because our original concern if we let that happen, and what if something bad happens to the wrong passenger . Not encourage drunk passengers to ride by themselves. They need to be accompanied. David how do you make sure drivers are drunk . Have fd k on other drivers cell phones. If they are speed driving, heartbreak, hard turn, we tested immediately. We do facial recognition if we see anything random. U. S. , there is a a lot of discussion about whether women are allowed to get senior positions in companies and very few fortune 500 companies have few ceos as women. Is it easier or harder in china . Jean most of the time you are not likable. I think there is still a Glass Ceiling everywhere. In china, it is a very encouraging work environment. In dd, we have dd womens network. Point is to encourage women. When you are young, you must have planned your career. But it is a challenge for young girls to say what do i want to do for 30 years because they feel like their life will pause when they have kids, get married. We went to make sure our women employees feel they are empowered and that is why we encourage a lot of working from home, a lot of culture like that. A young mom can work from home one day a week. David you have three kids. Do you work from home one day a week . Jean i cannot do that. But my kids are 10 and nine. David are they impressed with your job . Do they know how powerful you are . Jean they always think mom has a lot of problems. I go and discuss with them my work issues. To my view, the Younger Generation have more access to information than we do. I think they have very independent views. In chinar many women you are a role model. How do you fulfill that role . Do you speak to a lot of womens groups . How do you take on that responsibility . We are all learning and growing. I would not consider myself a role model, but i would consider myself someone who loves to share my life experience. I have also experienced ups and downsperforation personally and professionally. I think express your life story without telling people what to do. David your father is a prominent person in the Business World. Lenovo is a company he basically built. Does he give you advice . Jean went bis of it one piece of advice i got and benefited me was he always said life is supposed to be hard. Incidents, it is frustrating if you are helpless and hopeless like what happened last year. I remember my father told me life is supposed to be hard. I think that made me more resilient, stronger. David what would you say you are most proud of having achieved is the president of didi . Jean i am most proud that we yearroviding 10 billion a and serving a need and creating income for tens of millions of drivers. Be proude view team with a resilience and commitment and people feel this is the right thing to do. You doing okay . Yeah. This moving thing never gets any easier. Well, xfinity makes moving super easy. I can transfer my internet and tv service in about a minute. Wow, that is easy. Almost as easy as having those guys help you move. We are those guys. Thats you . The truck adds 10 pounds. In the arms. Okay. Transfer your Service Online in a few easy steps. Now thats simple, easy, awesome. Transfer your service in minutes, making moving with xfinity a breeze. Visit xfinity. Com moving today. David this is david rubenstein. Im coming to you from my home in bethesda, maryland. I have spent more consecutive
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