CALLED China's Uber-for-trucks, the startup Full Truck Alliance (FTA) plans to dominate the national truck-sharing market, reports Bloomberg.
By creating a marketplace that connects millions of mostly independent truckers, the Guiyang-based company, 228 miles south of Chongqin, makes money by charging a fee when brokering transactions.
Formed by a merger between China's two largest truck-sharing platforms - Huochebang and Yunmanman - the company has attracted backers including SoftBank and Tencent, Sequoia and Alphabet Inc's CapitalG.
Despite dominating the truck-sharing sector in China, Full Truck Alliance is now confronted with the same challenges that on-demand businesses world-wide face - proving its business model can lead to sustainable revenue and profit growth.
It also makes money from servicing drivers by selling top-up toll cards and directing them to service stations.
Much also depends on conditions in the market. In July, investments made by venture capital and private equity firms dropped 60 per cent to 407 cases, while the amount plummeted around 78 per cent to CNY32.8 billion (US$4.6 billion), according to research consultant Zero2IPO.
Said FTA chief financial officer Richard Zhang: 'We broke even both in the accounting and cash flow sense. I don't want to commit to a timetable here, but eventually we probably want to go for an IPO.'
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By creating a marketplace that connects millions of mostly independent truckers, the Guiyang-based company, 228 miles south of Chongqin, makes money by charging a fee when brokering transactions.
Formed by a merger between China's two largest truck-sharing platforms - Huochebang and Yunmanman - the company has attracted backers including SoftBank and Tencent, Sequoia and Alphabet Inc's CapitalG.
Despite dominating the truck-sharing sector in China, Full Truck Alliance is now confronted with the same challenges that on-demand businesses world-wide face - proving its business model can lead to sustainable revenue and profit growth.
It also makes money from servicing drivers by selling top-up toll cards and directing them to service stations.
Much also depends on conditions in the market. In July, investments made by venture capital and private equity firms dropped 60 per cent to 407 cases, while the amount plummeted around 78 per cent to CNY32.8 billion (US$4.6 billion), according to research consultant Zero2IPO.
Said FTA chief financial officer Richard Zhang: 'We broke even both in the accounting and cash flow sense. I don't want to commit to a timetable here, but eventually we probably want to go for an IPO.'
WORLD SHIPPING