China Bike Sharing Startup

China Bike Sharing Startup

It has been proved by a Bloomberg survey on bikes that the two leading bike-share startups of China namely oFo and Mobike have moved up to the profit of $100 million for the development of their investors. It has been observed that both the companies have risen in the market due to a variety of factors that were involved in making them unique. Mobike has started a program in Shanghai that will work without the government’s support while the other leading bike start-up oFo has inaugurated a program that will work as a bike share campus in Beijing and will spread its network in twenty main cities of China. Some tips if you want also launch your own startup in China.

 

Mobike 

OFO

oFo’s most famous investor Didi Chuxing has bought Uber’s China program in the month of August. According to Quartz, this investment will help the company to rise beyond success in the university system that will surely be most successful than Mobike which has also a connection with Uber. It should be kept in mind that the founder of Uber China’s executive was Davis Wang.

The top-rated startup of China Didi Chuxing is already providing taxis, cars, and buses and now it has started introducing two wheels vehicles. Didi claimed that this year it has invested ten million dollars in China’s most popular bike-sharing start-up known as OFO. Before buying Uber’s China business, Didi got one billion dollars from Apple this summer.

OFO options

This bike service started as a student project in 2014 which is working through an app on iPhone and Android. It started working from the influential university of China’s capital Peking University. Till present, it has expanded its network in 20 cities to the number of 70,000 bikes in different campuses and thus claims 1.5 million users that are taking roundabout 500,000 rides every day. According to news, OFO has earned 4 million in funding for biking.

It is not only a single start-up OFO working around the country, although there are a number of local bike-sharing programs too and also there is a startup formed by an Uber executive that is working as a well-known bike-sharing program in China.

According to a survey, Chinese consumer needs exceed others in terms of bike-sharing programs. It means there are a lot of bike consumers in China while the supply is a bit limited.

According to Forbes, China has beaten Italy in terms of bike sharing programs in 2013, and now this program and now it covers 400,000 units that are ten times the bike-sharing units of France.

From luxury goods to mass transport alternative

From the 19th century, bikes are used by the public until 1979 the economic change the demand for bike use raised and they were considered as the higher goods being consumed in the market. Till then one among five people had a bike which was considered as high consumption. From then the production of bikes increased which made cycling less expensive and affordable for everyone. And thus bike became a popular ride around China.

As a result of rapid change in Chinese economic growth mostly in urban road transportation and cultural changes, these factors made cycling popular. After increased car ownership which lessens the popularity of cycling still could not beat the demand for bikes which exceeded the demand for cars in the 19^th century. Today in Shanghai there are 9.43 million bicycles available for the population of 20 million people and mostly these people use bikes to travel to the workplace rather than taking the facility of public transport. In 2011, Hangzhou broke the record by supplying the world’s largest number of bikes.

According to a statistical report, round about 55.4 million bikes are sold in China. China is known to be among the list of the major exporters of bikes to the Asia Pacific and U.S markets and is considered as the largest producer of bikes as compared to them.

Conclusion

China is under the influence of its two largest growing bike startups that have risen in terms of profits within days of each other. It has been claimed that one of them has an exceptional valuation of $500 million. According to news, from a start-up named OFO in Beijing, Didi has earned up to $100 million from global firms and thus has provided the company with at least half a billion dollars in the last two years. Mobike has raised $100 million from Asian-based investors. Fundraising is high for companies particularly at the stage of their development which increases their value later.