Ofo is taking over another global city: after conducting a pilot program in Adelaide in South Australia, the company is putting their small yellow bikes in Sydney. Ofo also announced that it will double its fleet in Adelaide. On the other hand, its Chinese rival Bluegogo seems to be facing difficulties. The company has denied […]
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10 bikes in 16 minutes: Bike-rental race revives flagging industry
Editor’s note: This was originally a two part report by Li Siyi and Jiang Xiaochuan for Tencent Finance. It has been translated and further edited for clarity and style by Linda Lew. In winning the bike-rental “arms race,” the number of bikes on the street has become the critical factor. China’s largest bicycle manufacturing hub has […]
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Hacking blockchain, bike-rental and robotics at the TechCrunch Shenzhen Hackathon
Shenzhen’s rainstorms didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of students, designers and coders from all over the world participating in the 2017 TechCrunch Shenzhen hackathon, co-hosted by TechNode. In teams of 4 or 5, the participants took on challenges posed by sponsors Dianrong, Mobike, Meet Magento Association and Segway Robotics. Dianrong is China’s premier peer-to-peer lending platform […]
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Ofo sued for $1.3m in wrongful death claim
2017 has been a great year for bike rental startups as they get more money and expand both domestically and internationally. However, that doesn’t mean that everything is rosy. On March 26, a boy under 12 years old was hit by a bus and died while riding an ofo bike. His parents are now suing […]
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Ofo becomes first bike-rental unicorn after US$ 450 million series D
Chinese bike-sharing firm Ofo announced today that it has secured US$ 450 million (around RMB 3.1 billion) in its Series D financing, a move that is heating up the already cut-throat competition in this nascent market, our sister site TechNode Chinese is reporting. The round is led by Moscow-headquartered DST, and other investors in this […]
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Ofo signs partnership with Huawei and China Telecom, finally becoming a technology company
Yesterday, Ofo has announced a partnership deal (in Chinese) with China Telecom (中国电信) and Huawei. The partnership will see China Telecom providing wireless data access, Huawei providing NB-IoT chips (PDF), and Ofo providing the bikes. The announcement emphasized a big pain point for the company: their technology. At this point, it’s fairly clear that Mobike and Ofo […]
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Updated: DiDi will have their own bike rental unit after Bluegogo tie-up
Updated January 9, 2018: This article was updated to include a statement from Didi. Details have been released on the Didi Chuxing and Bluegogo tie-up. According to sources quoted by Pingwest (in Chinese), negotiations between the two mobility firms have been completed but Didi will only take over a part of Bluegogo’s business. Didi plans […]
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Shanghai mulling bike-rental regulations
Shanghai is mulling rules to regulate the sizzling yet reckless development of the city’s bike-rental sector, local media is reporting (in Chinese). The new rules, expected to be introduced in May and come into effect in June or July this year, are the latest government efforts to deal with the growing problems emerging with the bike-rental […]
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The saga of the “bike-rental company that wasn’t” continues
Kala Danche (卡拉单车) is back in business. As you may recall, last week we reported that the company had lost over 75% of their bicycles in less than 20 days of operation. Because of that, their only investor made a quick exit, taking all the user deposits with him and triggering a cascade of questions […]
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Weekly Briefing: Mobile payments, O2O, and the IoT economy
Editor’s note: This originally appeared in our weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get our updates straight to your inbox. This week’s briefing starts off a bit personal. I’ve been in and out of Chinese media and tech since 2010. Since I joined TechNode last November, I’ve told many people the same thing: There’s no […]
