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Liu Qing (Chinese: 柳青; pinyin: Liǔ Qīng, born 1978 in Beijing) or Jean Liu, is a Chinese business executive. Jean is the President of Didi Chuxing ("DiDi", formerly known as Didi Kuaidi), China's largest mobile transportation platform. She worked at Goldman Sachs Asia for 12 years, becoming Managing Director for Asia in 2012, before switching to Didi Dache serving as its chief operating officer in July 2014.
Contents
- Early life and education
- Financial career
- Didi Chuxing
- Personal life
- Honors
- Other activities
- Books
- References
After joining Didi Dache, she led the strategic merger between Didi Dache and its main competitor Kuaidi Dache which then created a new car hailing company named Didi Kuaidi (later rebranded as Didi Chuxing) in 2015. She also helped DiDi win the $1billion investment from Apple and masterminded DiDi's acquisition of Uber China in 2016.
In 2016, Jean was selected by Fast Company as one of "the World's Most Creative People in Business." She was named to Fortune's international list of 2016 Most Powerful Women. She was also ranked alongside Cheng Wei, CEO of DiDi, on The Wired 100 List.
Jean was one of Fortune's 2015 Global "40 Under 40" Business Leaders, and tops Fortune China's "40 Under 40" Business Leaders list together with Cheng Wei. In the same year, Jean was named one of China’s "25 Most Influential Business Women" by Fortune, and one of China’s "Most Influential Women" by Women in China. She was also named one of China’s "Top Women Business Leaders" in 2013 and 2015 by the China Entrepreneurial Magazine.
Early life and education
Jean was born in 1978 in Beijing, China. She is the daughter of Chinese businessman and Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi, and the granddaughter of Liu Gushu, a senior executive banker at the Bank of China. She received a bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Peking University, and a master's degree in Computer Science at Harvard University.
Financial career
After completing her master's at Harvard, Jean joined Goldman Sachs in 2002 as a junior analyst. For 12 years, from 2002 to 2014, she worked her way up to become one of the youngest managing directors in the bank’s history.
Didi Chuxing
When Jean joined Didi Dache in 2014, the firm was in fierce and expensive competition with rival Kuaidi Dache. Together with Cheng Wei, Jean masterminded the company's fundraising and its merger with Kuaidi Dache.
In December 2014, Jean helped Didi Dache to close a USD $700 million fundraising round, the biggest fundraising record for private companies. Investors include internationally renowned companies,such as Temasek, DST Global and Tencent.
On February 4, 2015, Didi Dache announced at the annual conference that Jean would be the President for Didi Dache and in charge of the day-to-day operation. She is the first person to take up the role of president for the company. On February 14 Didi Dache officially announced its merger with Kuaidi Dache.
In July 2015, Jean led the company to complete a USD $2 billion fundraising round, bringing the company's cash reserves to over USD $3.5 billion. This is the world's largest single fundraising round by any private company of all time, as well as the largest fundraising round for Chinese mobile internet companies.
In August 2015, Jean spoke with Jonathan Krim, former Technology Editor at The Wall Street Journal, on the future development of DiDi. She said,"Our philosophy is we don't really believe in disruptive termination. When it concerns millions of people's jobs, and when it concerns tens of millions of people's life, what we believe in is collaborative reform from within. We try to work with everyone." In the same year, Jean appeared on the October cover of Forbes Asia.
In January 2016, Jean announced on a press briefing that Didi Kuaidi and China Merchants Bank announced a comprehensive strategic partnership to cooperate on a wide range of initiatives, including in-app credit card payments, joint bank cards, automobile financing services, offline driver recruitment and other O2O initiatives. The partnership includes a strategic investment by CMB in Didi Kuaidi.
The new company Didi Kuaidi, which rebranded itself in September 2015 with a new name,Didi Chuxing, soon became one of the largest players in China's ridesharing market. Jean was named as the "Top Deal Maker" by The Wall Street Journal for merging Didi Dache and Kuaidi and completing record-breaking fundraising rounds for Didi Chuxing.
She also helped DiDi win a USD $1 billion investment from Apple in May 2016, giving Apple a strong foothold into the Chinese market and an opportunity for the two to collaborate on product integration and marketing. In an interview with CNBC, Jean discussed how the two companies initiated talks of partnership. When meeting Apple CEO Tim Cook in California the month before the deal, Liu reportedly said that a company named after a fruit could achieve something big. She explained that the company refers to its employees as "oranges" since the company's registered name—Xiaoju—means "little orange." The USD $1 billion investment from Apple was announced 22 days after their first meeting.
DiDi said it closed a USD $4.5 billion fundraising round that attracted new investors such as Apple, China Life Insurance Co. and the financial affiliate of online shopping firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. This fundraising round is the world’s largest equity share fundraising round by any private company of all time, refreshing the record set by DiDi and Jean.
She also lined up strategic partnerships with other three other car hailing companies overseas including Lyft(the U.S.), Ola (India) and Grab (Singapore). On August 1,DiDi acquired Uber's China unit.
Since Jean joined DiDi in July 2014, she and Cheng Wei have transformed the Company from a taxi-hailing platform into a diversified business that has become China’s largest comprehensive one-stop mobile transportation platform. Jean is working with Cheng Wei to oversee all the business operations of DiDi, which now offers a full range of mobility options on its app for close to 400 million users across over 400 Chinese cities, including taxi hailing, private car hailing, Hitch (social ride-sharing), DiDi Chauffeur, DiDi Bus, DiDi Test Drive, DiDi Car Rental and DiDi Enterprise Solutions. As many as 16 million rides were completed on DiDi's platform on a daily basis in Q2 2016. Every day, DiDi's platform generates over 70TB data, which is larger than 70,000 feature films, processes more than 9 billion routing requests, and produces over 13 billion locating points. In 2015, DiDi fulfilled 1.43 billion rides, and total riding mileage surpassed 12.8 billion kilometers, which is equivalent to travel around China's border line 290,000 times.
It is reported that, in DiDi's four years of operation, the company has gathered information like common pickup points and destinations, peak demand times, and frequent routes in 400 Chinese cities. It is trying to make full use of the big data for predictive analysis and to create innovative products for smart transportation. According to Jean, at this stage, the company is keen to recruit and retain top talent. Jean makes finding and retaining talent a priority at DiDi. In an interview with Fast Company, she said, "To be a great company you need not just the best product but also the best people. We aim to get the best young talent from many different fields and make sure that they have the feeling that they can have a huge impact."
Personal life
Jean currently lives in Beijing with her husband and three children. In October 2015, Jean announced internally that she was being treated for breast cancer at the age of 37. In early December 2015, she posted on her Weibo that she would return to work by the end of December after a two-month treatment. According to DiDi, she is now fine and "has been in all-in mode for quite some time".
After being named one of the "50 Most Powerful Moms of 2016" by Working Mother, Jean spoke about how she balanced working for DiDi with her relationship with her three kids.
Honors
Jean has been recognized as one of the most influential business leader in the world by many mainstream media outlets.
In 2017:
In 2016:
In 2015:
In 2013:
Other activities
Jean has been a keynote speaker at several important industry conferences, including Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, WSJDlive, RISE, CONVERGE, China Internet Conference, Code Conference, Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship, and Global Entrepreneurship Summit.
Jean is a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association Council, and a member of the Board of Directors of the ONE Foundation.
Books
Jean released her first book, DiDi: sharing economy is changing China, co-authored by Cheng Wei and Zhang Xiaofeng, the founder of "Internet Plus Club" and published by Posts & Telecom Press in June 2016. It is about how DiDi's use data-driven deep-learning algorithms drives the new era of economy and technology.