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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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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Ofo founder: Ofo will be profitable next year mainly from riding costs
The founder and CEO of the Ofo Dai Wei said that the main source of revenue for Ofo will be the user’s riding costs at the 2017 summer Davos Forum site held on June 28th. (Chinese source) “We now see many people in the street using Ofo, and we are confident that we can make […]
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Bike-rental startup ofo lands series D+ backed by Alibaba’s Ant Financial
The funding spree continues in China’s bike-rental sector. Bike-rental startup ofo announced over the weekend that it raised an undisclosed amount in its Series D+ from Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial. Under the deal, ofo cooperate with Ant Financial in the fields of e-payment, credit system and globalization process. The announcement came less than two […]
