Cheng Wei


Cheng Wei is a Chinese billionaire businessman. He is the founder and CEO of DiDi, a Chinese mobile transportation platform with global operations. In 2012, after eight years at Alibaba Group's regional and Alipay's operations, Cheng founded Beijing Xiaoju Technology Co Ltd in Zhongguancun.

Biography

Cheng was born in 1983 in Jiangxi, China. He received a bachelor's degree in administration from Beijing University of Chemical Technology.
After graduation, Cheng served as an assistant to a chairman at a foot massage company. About one year later, Cheng applied to join Alibaba as a sales person for its business-to-business e-commerce service in 2005.
For six years at Alibaba, Cheng served as a sales manager for the northern region of China. He later moved to China's largest third-party online payment platform, Alipay, where he was soon promoted to the position of regional manager.
In 2012, Cheng left Alibaba to found Beijing Xiaoju Technology Co and launch Didi Dache—translated to "Beep Beep Call a Taxi"—as the initial incarnation of his ride-hailing service.
In 2014, Cheng hired Jean Liu, a former Goldman Sachs Asia managing director, as the COO of the company.
In February 2015, the company merged with its rival Kuaidi Dache and was renamed Didi Kuaidi.
In August 2016, DiDi acquired all assets of the Chinese division of Uber.
Since the company was founded in 2012, under the leadership of Cheng Wei and Jean Liu, DiDi has grown to become one of the world’s highest valued tech start-ups.

Other activities

In September 2015, Cheng was selected as a Co-Chair of the Summer Davos in Asia: Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2015.

Published work