Oh, ride sharing (and file sharing) are valid business models. It's just that competing on price alone means that some companies will take a loss.
When I interviewed for my current job, (corporate file sharing,) the founder and CEO was very aware of this. He used the terms "race to the bottom" for companies that compete on price. Then, he explained that we had to focus on solving real problems for our customers that our competitors didn't solve.
7 years later, our cheapo competitors are out of business and we're a leader. This, in part is because we offer a feature set that no one else offers.
What does this mean for ride sharing? It means that Didi needs to stop discounting its services and offer features that their competitors don't have. They might have to offer features that the rest of the market thinks are crazy; but crazy enough that Didi's chunk of the marketshare just won't choose the competitor.
I don't think this is a viable option for ride-sharing. Once you get past the basics that all competitors can provide (non-buggy app, good response times, and a rating model to incentivize good driver behavior), the only thing that matters to the vast, vast majority of people is price. People just don't care about the "extras" that much to change their price-consciousness.
but if the extras amount to discounts, eg vegas taxi that takes you to a strip club and takes care of the cover charge (with kickback from club), then those extras will sell it
When I interviewed for my current job, (corporate file sharing,) the founder and CEO was very aware of this. He used the terms "race to the bottom" for companies that compete on price. Then, he explained that we had to focus on solving real problems for our customers that our competitors didn't solve.
7 years later, our cheapo competitors are out of business and we're a leader. This, in part is because we offer a feature set that no one else offers.
What does this mean for ride sharing? It means that Didi needs to stop discounting its services and offer features that their competitors don't have. They might have to offer features that the rest of the market thinks are crazy; but crazy enough that Didi's chunk of the marketshare just won't choose the competitor.