Editor’s note: This was produced in partnership with Start Alliance, a business network between the most vibrant startup hubs around the globe. Start Alliance supports startups to adapt business models to international requirements and accelerates corporate innovations. Partner cities are Berlin, New York, Paris, Tel Aviv, and Shanghai. I have worked in four startup cities: Silicon Valley, […]
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[Updated] The bike-rental war is creating unsustainable demand for bikes
China’s booming bike-sharing business has been disrupting the country’s traditional bike industry landscape, while also being acclaimed by city travelers for playing its part in cracking the hard nut of the last kilometer of their journey. After receiving multi-billion RMB investments from 30-some institutional investors, major bike-sharing services Mobike, Ofo, and their competitors have been […]
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Shanghai Bike-Sharing Battle: Ofo vs Mobike vs Xiaoming
Ready or not, China, once known as the bicycle kingdom, is in the midst of a cycling revival. While the car has rapidly displaced bikes, we now see more than a dozen startups flooding into the dockless bike-sharing arena. Investors have taken their sides in the stiffening battle, but a more pressing question is which […]
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Ofo hits speed bump as internal corruption allegations go public
Ofo, a leader in China’s burgeoning bike-rental market, has found itself embroiled in corruption allegations this week. The new first broke out on Maimai, a real name registered social networking platform for professionals, where one user was asking about working at ofo. However, the answers that followed took an unexpected turn towards internal corruption allegations. […]
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Top 3 Chinese tech fails of 2017
The year 2017 was great for many tech firms in China. Tencent briefly outdid Facebook in market valuation reaching a $500 billion valuation mark. Toutiao shot up from obscurity on the international scene with its parent Bytedance buying Musical.ly. Alibaba spread its wings further into Asia, Didi started its global expansion, Huawei overtook Apple as […]
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Ofo becomes first bike-rental unicorn after US$ 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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[Podcast] China Tech Weekly March 19: Airbnb inches closer to the Chinese market?
Editor’s note: This originally appeared on China Tech Insights, an English research unit affiliated to Tecnent’s Online Media Group. In this week’s episode: Listen to the episode here or subscribe. Chinese companies made their debut at this year’s SXSW. Heated bike-sharing venture Mobike, China’s Quora-equivalent Zhihu, among others, shared their view on how Chinese technology is […]
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Are China’s bike-sharing platforms really part of the sharing economy?
China’s O2O market has seen quite a few companies doing interesting things, some succeeding, some failing. The latest hot vertical is bike-sharing. According to the China’s bike sharing industry mini-report by China Channel, Mobike (backed by Tencent and Foxconn) and Ofo (backed by Didi and Xiaomi) are clear market leaders amongst growing competitors. Founded in January 2015, the […]
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Enjoy being slow: Why Chinese tech companies are embracing a slower culture
In a movie with Chinese kungfu star Jet Li, Alibaba Group co-founder and executive chairman Jack Ma defeats eight celebrity martial artists in just 20 minutes. Not only does the mini-film try to portray Jack Ma’s unbeatable position in China’s tech industry, it also references the most commonly cited similarity between the tech industry and China’s ancient […]
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Bike-rental war escalates with Alipay supporting “scan-and-ride” function for six bike-rental apps
Alipay, the online and mobile payment platform operated by Ant Financial, has teamed up with six bike-rental apps to allow users to rent 6 million bikes in 50 cities across China directly through the app’s new “scan and ride” function. Users can unlock any ofo, YouonBike, Bluebike, hellobike, Ubike or funbike vehicle simply by scanning […]
