Crowds of people descend on the Coolqi bike hire scheme’s head office in Tongzhou to get their deposits back as Coolqi founder and CEO Gao Weiwei (高唯伟) tells our sister site that the company is not bankrupt, but that he has been removed as CEO (in Chinese). The company’s WeChat payments have been frozen and it is […]
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Ofo seeks 1 million RMB in damages for defamation against social network Maimai
Bike rental startup ofo is filing a lawsuit against social networking platform Maimai (脉脉) for slander and defamation after a user on the website claimed ofo staff were engaged in graft. An expose of the so-called ofo internal corruption practices was first found in early May on Maimai, where a post of one user talking […]
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Three keys for Asian startups to go global
We are seeing Asian startups expanding globally. This year, most notably Chinese bike rental companies Mobike and Ofo have expanded to Asian, North Americna and European markets. Chinese smartphone manufacturers Huawei and Xiaomi have been also successful in expanding to Southeast Asia and India. So what are the keys for Asian startups to go global? […]
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Bike-rental firms confirm in-app balance refundable, but still not easy
Five bike-rental firms made it clear that users can get back their in-app balance, following their statement weeks ago that bike-rental deposits are secure and are totally refundable, local media is reporting. Bike-rental firms including Mobike, ofo, Bluegogo, and UniBike made the statement at a conference hosted in Beijing yesterday by the China Consumers Association […]
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Tier 3 failure shows bike-rental ain’t that easy
Chinese tech media is aflutter this morning after news last night that Kala, an O2O bike-rental company, went out of business after only 19 days of operation. In those 19 days, the company, in cooperation with the Putian government (a Tier 4 city in Fujian province), were only able to recover 157 of the 667 bikes […]
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On April Fool’s Day, one joke gets opposite reactions from China’s bike rental companies
Ah, it’s that time of year again: when the unsuspecting are caught unawares by the unstoppable forces of time. April Fool’s has become a time-honored tradition for those in tech, a time for everyone to flex their humor muscles and devise sometimes silly, sometimes outlandish, and sometimes very believable news stories and announcements. The best […]
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Report shows bike rentals and ride-hailing are solving China’s traffic problems
Despite their immense popularity, bike rentals in China are giving daily headaches to local governments for users’ illegal parking, vandalism, and traffic violations. But bike-rental is seeing some hope in fixing its battered reputation. A report co-published by Amap, Tsinghua University, Alibaba Cloud, ofo and other industry researchers shows that traffic congestion across the nation is in […]
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[Updated] O2O bike-rental deposits in China may not be as secure as users think
You must have noticed the boom bike-rental companies in China as an increasing array of rainbow colored bikes mushrooming on streets across the country. Endless financing rounds from big names like Tencent, Didi, and Foxconn have been injected into one or another of the startups that involved in a heating field. Despite the initial “wows” […]
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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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Ofo launches in US capital, hopes to conquer US market within a year
Ofo, China’s leading bike rental company, announced October 10 its launch in Washington, D.C., following Seattle and Massachusetts. The fast-expanding firm will deploy 400 of its yellow bikes over the course of its first week, as the local government only allows 400 bikes on the streets during the “demonstration stage.” The local regulator appears to be extra […]
