A host of small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms are striving to launch IPOs, yet the true beneficiaries may not be them.

T3 Travel, Enjoy Travel, 365 Ride-hailing, and Huoli Travel are heading to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, while Hello is accelerating plans for an indirect A-share listing. The IPO rush among small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms is on the brink of eruption.

Behind them, AutoNavi, the aggregation platform, may emerge as the biggest winner in this industrial and capital feast.

Most of these small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms rely on the aggregation model to establish themselves. Once they successfully go public, they will have greater motivation and resources to expand their business scale, allowing AutoNavi to naturally achieve steady growth.

On the other hand, AutoNavi and its backer Alibaba have invested in numerous small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms, not only reaping capital gains but also strengthening their voice in the travel ecosystem.

The IPO Rush in Ride-hailing

At the end of May, Enjoy Travel, a leader in the Shanghai regional market, updated its IPO prospectus and continued its push for a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing.

Adding to the queue for Hong Kong IPOs are T3 Travel, Shengwei Era (365 Ride-hailing), and Huoli Travel (Huoli Group), along with Hello, which is planning an indirect A-share listing. A mini-boom in ride-hailing IPOs is taking shape.

Since 2020, Dida, Ruqi, and Caocao have all made simultaneous attempts at Hong Kong IPOs, sparking the first wave of ride-hailing listings. Four to five years later, a second wave of listings is "on the horizon," and the ride-hailing market is entering an era of "blossoming diversity."

The ride-hailing industry has grown to a market size exceeding 400 billion yuan in just over a decade since its inception.

In the past, there were only taxis, not ride-hailing services. It wasn't until the mobile internet transformed traditional industries that solutions were found to address the pain points of the taxi industry.

In 2010, Yidao Yongche was established, one of the world's earliest ride-hailing platforms, nearly synchronization (simultaneously) with Uber.

Over the next two years, ride-hailing platforms like Didi and Kuaidi were founded, and Uber entered the Chinese market. Backed by various capitals, the ride-hailing market witnessed a "thousand-team battle."

It wasn't until Didi merged with Kuaidi and acquired Uber China that the chaos in the ride-hailing market at this stage ended, with Didi officially becoming China's ride-hailing leader and maintaining that position to this day.

A few years later, automotive OEMs discovered the value of long-term operations and launched their own ride-hailing brands. Shenzhou Zhuanche was backed by the former Shenzhou Group; Caocao Travel by Geely Holding; Shouqi Yueche is a brand under Shouqi; Enjoy Travel was initiated by SAIC; GAC launched Ruqi Travel; and behind T3 Travel are Dongfeng, FAW, and Changan.

Supported by OEMs, they quickly grew into a solid second tier in the ride-hailing market. Didi, too, welcomed its most formidable competitors.

But at this point, the ride-hailing market still lacked new stories—until AutoNavi entered the scene.

AutoNavi, a map software, launched the "one-click multi-platform hailing" feature in 2017, deploying its ride-hailing business through an aggregation model and operating low-key ly (low-key).

Around 2021, as the entire internet market entered a phase of inventory (stock) competition, Alibaba planned to split its major business segments, giving AutoNavi the impetus to expand its own business scale.

Thus, AutoNavi seized market opportunities, leveraging its hundreds of millions of precise and high-frequency users, and with the help of subsidies, continued to penetrate the ride-hailing market with its aggregation model, finally securing the second place in the market.

AutoNavi's greatest value lies in its role as a "platform of platforms," using an e-commerce mindset to separate the ride-hailing entry point from the fulfillment, changing the operational model of the ride-hailing market.

It can be said that without AutoNavi, there would be no second half to the ride-hailing market story, and certainly not the current wave of ride-hailing IPOs.

AutoNavi Emerges as the Big Winner

Once T3 Travel, Enjoy Travel, 365 Ride-hailing, and Huoli Travel successfully go public, AutoNavi will emerge as the biggest winner.

It is precisely because small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms are deeply bound to aggregation platforms like AutoNavi that the aggregation model has achieved its current market status. This has not only rewritten the ride-hailing market landscape but also allowed numerous inconspicuous small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms to stand up again.

China's third-largest ride-hailing platform, T3 Travel, has seen its order volume from aggregation platforms account for 61.5%, 77.5%, and 85.9% over the past three years, with GMV accounting for 61.8%, 78.6%, and 86.4%, respectively.

Smaller platforms are even more extreme. Take Shengwei Era's 365 Ride-hailing, for example. From 2021 to 2023 and the first half of 2024, the GTV generated through AutoNavi accounted for 95.3%, 92.9%, 89.5%, and 93.4%, respectively.

In 2020, aggregated ride-hailing accounted for only 10.9% of the ride-hailing market share, rising to 32.5% by 2025. Market expectations are that it could reach 53.1% by 2030.

After small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms go public, they will have greater motivation and more resources to expand their business, allowing AutoNavi to naturally achieve a larger market scale.

Another hidden factor is that most of these ride-hailing platforms that rose with AutoNavi have AutoNavi and its backer Alibaba on their shareholder lists.

Everyone knows that T3 Travel was initiated by FAW, Dongfeng, and Changan, each holding a 15% stake. In fact, Tencent Holdings and Alibaba are also founding shareholders, holding 12% stakes each.

Enjoy Travel was established in 2019 and received investments from Alibaba and CATL in 2020. Later, Alibaba transferred its shares to AutoNavi, which holds a 6.47% pre-IPO stake.

Shengwei Era, the parent company of 365 Ride-hailing, has long been China's largest provider of intercity road passenger transport information services. Being part of the travel ecosystem, it received an A-round financing from Ali Travel in 2016; subsequent investments by Ali Travel have made it Shengwei Era's single largest shareholder, holding a 27.01% stake.

Hello Travel needs no introduction; it was incubated by Alibaba and Ant Group, expanding from shared bicycles to a mini-giant in the full-scenario mobile travel market.

According to incomplete statistics, ride-hailing platforms that have not yet disclosed listing plans but have equity relationships with AutoNavi and Alibaba include at least Xiehua Travel, Dazhong Travel, Fengyun Travel, and Xindong Travel.

Tianyancha shows that AutoNavi's operating entity, Gaoxing (Tianjin) Management Consulting Co., Ltd., directly holds a 25.71% stake in Xiehua Travel, a 5.26% stake in Dazhong Travel, and a 16.67% stake in Fengyun Travel; Alibaba Venture Capital has invested in Xindong Travel, holding a 30% stake.

If the second wave of ride-hailing IPOs can proceed smoothly, the AutoNavi ecosystem will not only achieve substantial paper profits but also amplify synergies with small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms, strengthening its own ride-hailing aggregation platform ecosystem.

The Battle for Higher Dimensions in Ride-hailing

The greatest advantage of AutoNavi's ride-hailing aggregation model is its ability to rapidly scale. By combining AutoNavi's user base and scenario convenience with the transportation capacity of small and medium-sized ride-hailing platforms, both sides meet their needs.

However, aggregation platforms rely on commissions as their core profit point, putting further pressure on the already fiercely competitive ride-hailing industry's profitability.

Shengwei Era disclosed in its prospectus that the service fee rate for AutoNavi's ride-hailing platform is 9%, while the rate for Ali Travel's Feizhu airport passenger transport aggregation platform is as high as 15%.

From the performance of related companies planning to go public, it is evident that small and medium-sized ride-hailing companies relying on the aggregation model must bear high sales and marketing expenses, leaving most still in the red.

Therefore, when facing investor concerns, most of them state that they are actively taking measures to reduce their reliance on aggregation platforms.

The stock trend in the ride-hailing market is becoming increasingly evident. Going forward, the industry is expected to evolve towards price stability, ecological win-win, and sustainable development. Under the ride-hailing aggregation ecosystem, the impossible triangle of growth, profitability, and user experience requires greater attention from AutoNavi.

More realistically, as one of China's internet infrastructures, AutoNavi has reached a point where Chinese netizens can hardly do without it. However, this star app with hundreds of millions of users lacks other better profit models.

Early on, AutoNavi positioned itself as a tool app, which was both an advantage and a shortcoming (weakness)—to maintain the user experience of this super tool, it was impossible to insert too many ads.

Later, AutoNavi ventured into ride-hailing. When you search for a destination on AutoNavi, if you're not driving yourself, you need a ride. This natural scenario import (integration) is a paragon of internet traffic monetization.

Last year, AutoNavi followed in the footsteps of Google Maps, modeling itself after Meituan's Dianping, and launched the offline consumption evaluation system AutoNavi Street Scan. However, its initial promise of "never commercializing" makes AutoNavi Street Scan seem more like a safeguard for Alibaba's instant consumption ecosystem strategy.

The next core competitive area in the ride-hailing market is undoubtedly AI-powered Robotaxi. Currently, the Robotaxi market has formed three major factions: tech companies, OEMs, and ride-hailing operators.

As a leading ride-hailing platform, AutoNavi has once again chosen a cooperative model to enter the Robotaxi market. The market is more concerned with how much technological asset this cooperative model will ultimately leave for AutoNavi.

Recently, Didi Chuxing officially rebranded as Didi, signaling its jump out (transcending) of the single scenario of travel and the formal launch of its long-planned transformation into a one-stop super lifestyle service platform (service platform).

Competition in the ride-hailing market is transcending beyond ride-hailing itself.