Leak: Uber provides nearly a million rides per day in China alone

Uber is now getting close to one million rides per day across China, according to a leaked internal letter from Uber CEO Travis Kalanick obtained today by the Financial Times (paywall) (hat-tip to the New York Times‘ Paul Mozur for spotting this on Twitter). In the letter (full PDF embedded below), Kalanick states that three Chinese cities are now larger than New York in terms of the number of rides – Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chengdu. New York is Uber’s largest city outside of China. Those Chinese cities achieved this “in just 9 months,” he wrote, compared to the four years that Uber has been active in New York. Uber’s drivers in China are now “completing almost 1 million trips per day and the business has doubled in the last month.” Uber first launched in beta in China in August 2013, but Kalanick counts the official launch in February 2014 as the company’s actual start in the country.