Ahead of a likely initial public offering later this year, Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing Technology Co. is expanding its global operations with the launch of services in Russia.

It’s the first time the company has offered its services in Europe. Didi debuted its ride-hailing service in Kazan, the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, some 497 miles east of Moscow.

Tatarstan is home to Russia’s largest information technology park and is said to have one of the strongest pro-innovation development agendas in the Russia Federation. Didi Russia said it intends to commit long-term investments to provide drivers with a competitive and transparent service fee structure, and riders with safe and convenient mobility services. Driver recruitment for the service, which launched Tuesday, began in late July and is claimed to have been well-received by the local driver community.

The service will compete directly with Yandex Europe AG, a company often referred to as the “Google of Russia” that also is currently Russia’s largest ride-hailing company. Both Didi and Yandex’s ride-hailing service are partially owned by Uber Technologies Inc.

Uber took an 18.8% stake in Didi, since diluted to 15.9% when it sold its Chinese business to Didi in 2016. Uber took a 36.6% stake in Yandex’s riding hailing service in a $3.72 billion joint venture in 2017. In the latter deal, Uber merged its business in Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Georgia into the Yandex joint venture.

Outside China, Didi currently operates in Australia, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia and Panama. In those countries it competes directly with Uber.

Didi’s plans to go public were first reported July 20. The company is considering a listing in Hong Kong by the end of the year on a likely valuation of more than $80 billion. Coming into its IPO, Didi has raised about $21.2 billion, including megarounds of $5.5 billion in April 2017 and $7 billion in June 2016. Notable investors include SoftBank Group Corp., Toyota Motor Co. and Booking Holdings Inc.

The company’s launch in Russia came as Didi also celebrated a new milestone of more than 50 million global daily trips Aug. 25. The one-day record number included trips from Didi’s ride-hailing, taxi-hailing, Hitch (P2P commuter ridesharing), bike sharing and designated driving services.

While difficult to compare directly, Uber by comparison reported 737 million trips for the quarter ended June 30, an average of 8.1 million trips a day amid a downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the same quarter the year before, Uber reported 1.677 billion trips, or 18.4 million trips on average a day.

Photo: Didi Chuxing