I dont consider myself a journalist. 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 . Friends invested uber years ago. It was a 3 billiondollar market value and i said, he will lose the money. No writing company can be worth that. Uber turned out to be a larger sum of money. I had the same reaction when i heard about a Company Called did i it was a small uber like company in china and i did not begin to catch on. I was wrong. It is the largest single ridehailing company in the world. The person running that company is a young woman named jean lou. Liu. She is one of the bestknown Women Business leaders in china and extremely intelligent who is clearly going to make this company even more successful as she continues to lead. We are here with jean liu who is the president of didi chuxing which is the biggest mobile Transportation Companies in china. In 2012, was started it was not the first, or only company, doing this. Jean there were 30 players doing exactly the same thing. David did you have anything better than the other 29 . What were your advantages to the other company . Jean we worked really hard. Example, there were a lot of wheng competitors and there was competition we set down and thought about how we could provide better value. We launched for business lines businessmonths 4 lines in three months. We tried to catch up. David there is another company in the United States called uber which are probably familiar with. Jean yes. David it grew very quickly in the United States and other parts of the world. It also had a division in china. Said, welaces, uber will roll over our competition but in one country they were not able to do that and that was china. In china, you came to a deal where you merged but became the parent company. Uber is an investor is that right . Jean yes. David are you an investor in uber . Jean yes, a small investor. David your company has grown how many writers do you have . Jean we have hundreds of millions of users. , hundreds of millions. David you have more users than uber. Jean yes. David today, what are your other businesses . Jean first, we are very thankful for the competition because it makes us better and stronger. China,er first king to it was bigger than our market. Because of the competition, it helped us to push ourselves to launch different product lines. Car inched a private price and premier and express line. Later we had the pitch which is a social hitch which is social car pulling. 10 servicese than to users. David most Chinese Companies that are Technology Leaders like have not takent, dominant positions outside china. You are taking positions outside china. Have you been successful outside china so far . Jean we are very successful. I think it is very encouraging. We are in brazil, mexico, colombia, we are in the latin markets and just entering the Australian Market in japan market. David how do have to change everything for the different markets . Different qualities you have to bring to the table. How do you make your Services Better for these countries . David we provide our service jean we provide service by combining two things. When is the global architecture and local innovation. We tailor make products for different markets. The product in brazil and japan are very different. Unlike other companies that make you a copy paste. Have one product in the you do a copy and paste. We have one product in the states which is very different. David you mentioned you are in the United States. Jean it is a very crowded market. David not like that will happen anytime soon. Jean our philosophy is if we can bring user value, we will consider it. , wet is the same product 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 in one way or another . Jean to be honest, that does not really impact our business because we are supported by our local passengers. However, we have been benefited from trading and sharing over years. It is unfortunate to see this and of course, we hope we can get results. David if i am an american tourist and want to use your service in china, is it easy to do . Do i have to speak chinese . Jean you do not at all. We have a great english version. David really . Jean yes, and a lot of our employees, colleagues are from overseas. Especially we have a Global Business now. David uber is publicly traded and losing 1 billion plus a 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. Back to the uber point, i am sure it is temporary and they will go through it. They are very experienced intelligent. For us, it is a 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. Second, in china we are going through a transition that people urge for better life quality, better lives, and people want to spend more money. David the average age of your customers is . Jean 2030 and a lot of them are students from college. Are 50, 60, 70ho are not your target audience . Jean they are. We definitely want to make our technology more accessible to everyone. David back to the question of profitability, you are profitable. Jean on our core business david your core business. Yournk you spun it off was automatic driving. Jean autonomous. David why did you spin that off and when do you think autonomous driving will actually be very common . Jean yeah, i think it will take huge commitment for Autonomous Technology to mature. Any company who wants to succeed needs to be prepared to spend money. We want to attract the top talent and make it independent. Time, we run the largest network. For in Autonomous Car to run is easy. In california, it could be easier than in beijing. We have this huge amount of data so that makes us at an advantage. David how many years away . Jean i think it will be a long time. David five years . Jean 510 years. David it is not profitable in the near future. Jean we are in the investment period. Ofid you had market value 500 million . Jean yes. David if i wanted to invest, could i do that today . Jean not really. David no . Jean no. Well known father is in the Business World is the founder of the nobel . Jean yes. David did he say you have to go into a computerrelated thing . Jean not really. David he didnt put any pressure on you . Jean no. David you the pecking University Echo jean yes. David after you graduated, is it like the United States where there are more men than women in Computer Science . Students andere 36 30 of them were men. David you graduated but then went to school in the United States harvard. Was that hard to get into . Jean it was hard to get into. David you went to harvard and got a masters in computer cy vance. Did you find it easier or harder than you thought it would be . Jean i wouldnt say harder or easier. I think it is more interesting. My key purpose to go abroad is to see the world and meet people. It was totally rewarding. View, your english, by my is perfect. Jean not really. [laughter] david where did you get this english . Jean i think i got in china. In china, 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. David better than mine. [laughter] did you decide to go to a great chinese firm like Goldman Sachs . Jean it was almost accidental to join goldman. I was in research at goldman and i thought it was fascinating. I decided i want to do apply for a wanted to apply for a fulltime job. That is why i ended up in the Investment Banking division in hong kong. David you went to hong kong and stayed there for 12 years and became a managing director. Jean yes. David if you are a managing director, most people would say it could not be better than that. Why did you decide to leave . Jean a lot of people ask me that question especially when i resigned. Said, i cannot believe you are joining a taxi company. When i first moved back to beijing, i always found myself struggling in the street with my three young children. I did not have a license plate to drive in beijing. You have to have your license plate and it is hard to get. It is a lottery system. It is hard to hail a taxi and then i met deedee which was a did which was ai very young company. That company was started in 2012 . Jean i met the founder in 2013. I wanted to make an investment at the beginning. I tried three times and failed three times. David on behalf of goldman or yourself . Jean on behalf of goldman. I was a very good goldman soldier. David and he said we dont need your money or what . Jean yeah. You know the Due Diligence process from goldman is quite strict. I always wanted to build something. Me, to be aseems to huge impact. I thought why dont i join him . David how big was the company when you join . 500 it was valued around million and 700 people and the only product we had was the taxi hailing app. When i joined, and a lot of my friends or my family advised me not because china is very competitive. People think there is so much uncertainty. David what do you say to the people who advise not to join now . Do you see them and say, if i had listened tilo you, i would still be at goldman . Jean i hesitated. , if youat down and said do not let me invest, let me join you and he did not back off which was a surprise. I hesitated when people advised me not to. Tibet together. It was a soulsearching trip and after that i made up my mind. David what position did you join it . Jean chief operating officer. David you came from Goldman Sachs but at goldman you are not managing hundreds of people. How could you be the chief operating officer. . Jean i did not manage hundreds of hundreds of people but i saw a lot of business. I did talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and i think it is in my genes. Who were the big investors in the early days . Jean there are a number of them. The strategic once we have tencent, alibaba, also tim cook. We have a lot of very well known financial investors. David most of the investors, with a large Institutional Investors . Jean it is pretty diverse. David when you joined the company, it had a markel ofrket valuation 500 million. What suppose i say i would like to invest, could i do that today . Davidjean no. David no . Jean no. David you are 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 services . Jean yes, most of the time. David does everybody know who you are . Jean the other day, we have this assignment that we have to drive as well. We have to test the driver experience. The other day, i did it with my colleague we picked up a young guy. My colleague introduced him, this is our president and we want to survey you. He did not seem impressed at all. He said whatever. He said why dont you give me some coo coupon if you want to survey me . I am not a celebrity. David you are widely viewed as one of the most powerful women in business in china, women in business around the world, and not just a prominent woman, a prominent executive. You are running one of the Biggest Companies in china and the world in terms of market value. Had you keep that from going to your head . Jean good question. Have a veryally tough job. It is a very challenging job. When i first joined this company, i thought it was a technology company. Now i know it is about people, about safety. Last year, there were two terrible incidents on our platform. Two young girls got killed. It was devastating. For all of the Senior Executives 25yearolds we thought, what is the next step . This is more challenging than other competition comes in . David with the death because of the driver . Jean yes. The driver was a criminal. David how do you screen those people in the future . Jean after that, we launch more than 40 product features about safety. Sharing,cognition, row itinerary sharing, so there are 40 of them. The challenge 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. For example, when dilemma we face is, do we allow drivers to reject drunk passengers . There are a lot of internal conflicts with drunk passengers. Us dailyomplained to saying, can we reject drunk passengers . David what do you do . Jean we put up a nationwide consultation quorum and asked for feedback. 80 said things we should. It was a surprise to us because our original concern was if we let that happen, what if something happened to the passenger . We do not encourage a drunk passenger to ride by themselves. They need to be accompanied by sober friend. David how do you make sure your drivers are not drunk . Jean that is easy. David how do you make sure drivers are drunk . Jean we have fdk on other drivers cell phones. If they are speed driving, turn, wee, hard test immediately. We do facial recognition if we see anything random. David in the u. S. , there is a a lot of discussion about whether women are allowed to get senior positions and very few fortune 500 companies have few ceos as women. Is it easier or harder in china . Jean i think you can always be a ceo or president. Most of the time youre not likable. I think there is still a Glass Ceiling everywhere but in china, it is already a very encouraging work environment. Di, we have the womens network. We encourage women to plan their career for the next 30 years. You planned young, your career to the next 30 years but it is challenging for young girls. They always feel that the pause when they get married, have kids. We want to make sure our employees feel empowered. 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 young kids. Do you work from home one day a week . [laughter] jean i cannot do that my kids are 10 and nine. David are they impressed with your job . Know that they dont think me as powerful. They think mom has a lot of problems because i go home and discuss with them my work issues. In my view, the younger eration generation z they have more access to information that we do. They have very independent views. We talk a lot. David for many women in china and elsewhere, you are a role model. How do you fulfill that role . To speak to groups . You tell women they should do x, y, z to advance . How do you take on that responsibility . Jean first of all, we are learning and growing. I would not consider myself a role model but someone who loves to share my own experience because i have also experienced ups and downs. I think the best way is to share your life story without telling people what to do. People will get inspired anyways. David your father is a prominent person in the chinese Business World. Lenovo is a company he basically built. Does he give you advice on what to do . Jean one piece of advice i got and benefited me my whole life was he always said, life is supposed to be hard. Incidents it is frustrating. You feel helpless, hopeless, like what happened last year. I remember my father told me life is supposed to be hard. That makes me more resilient, stronger. David so far, what would you say you are most proud of having achieved is the president of didi. Jean for the company, i most proud we are providing 10 billion trips a year and serving all types of needs. We are creating income for tens of millions of drivers. What makes me proud is that we have a team with resilience and commitment and people feel this is the right thing to do. Announcer the following is a paid program. The opinions and views expressed do not reflect those of bloomberg, its lp, or its affiliates. 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