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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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 Talk 1: An introduction to China’s bike sharing
Editor’s note: We are very happy to announce the China Tech Talk podcast, a colloboration with ChinaChannel. Every week John and Matthew will discuss the latest trends and happenings in China’s exciting technology ecosystem. At TechNode, we continue to explore new and interesting ways of creating content. Be on the lookout for more in the […]
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Shenzhen bans more than 13,000 people from using bike-rental companies
A total of 13,615 people in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen will be temporarily banned from using shared bikes due to traffic violations, according to media reports (in Chinese). This is the first batch of traffic offenders that will be punished according to the new rules on shared bicycle users’ behavior issued by the Shenzhen […]
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Bike-rental in China takes a tacky new turn with golden bikes
The streets of China are covered with gold…. gold bicycles that is. The new bikes are a product of cooperation of Beijing-based bike sharing company Coolqi (酷骑单车) and Haier, a well-known consumer electronics company from Qingdao. Besides the golden paint accentuated with royal blue details, the biggest novelty offered by the bikes is the onboard […]
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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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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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Has China’s sharing economy finally jumped the shark?
Bikes, bikes, and more bikes. China’s streets have been invaded by bike rentals of every hue. More and more Chinese entrepreneurs are sparing no effort to jump on the sharing bandwagon. Now, when you walk around the streets or hang around shopping malls, there’s a high chance that you’ll come across a slew of shared […]
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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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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 […]
