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Yingzhi Yang

Alibaba Group confirmed it was looking at contributing to a new round of fundraising by Shanghai-based bike sharing start-up Hellobike.
“We are considering this opportunity,” said an Alibaba spokeswoman, responding to an earlier Chinese media report saying that Alibaba planned to invest “hundreds of millions of US dollars” in Hellobike in the near future.
Alibaba declined to provide further details. A Hellobike spokeswoman declined to comment.
The three-year-old start-up already counts Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial, Primavera Capital, and GGV Capital among its backers.
The shy geek who survived brutal battle in China’s bike sharing industry
Six months ago Hellobike announced it had raised more capital in a round of financing led by Ant Financial but declined to reveal the amount.
Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
The bike-sharing firm said earlier this week that it has processed 12 billion orders over the past two and a half years and the number of its average daily orders was 20 million.
As a survivor of the brutal bike-sharing wars in China that saw the top two players Ofo and Mobike spend billions to stay in the game amid cut-throat pricing and a government crackdown on bikes clogging up streets, Hellobike’s ambitions now go beyond bike sharing.
Disused bicycles from oBike and Ofo help keep Myanmar children in school
Last autumn, it rebranded itself as HelloTransTech in Chinese to signal its plan to expand into other transportation areas such as electric bike sharing and ride hailing and car pooling. That move not only put the start-up head to head with Meituan Dianping-owned bike sharer Mobike, but also China’s ride hailing giant Didi Chuxing.
The carpooling business in China has been mired in controversy ever since the murder last year of two female passengers who booked rides on Didi Chuxing’s hitch service.
Hellobike was ranked the fifth most popular transportation app between December 2017 and December 2018, according to a report by research firm TalkingData. The top four apps were Didi Chuxing, Ofo, Mobike and Dida Chuxing.
Singapore suspends licence of Chinese bike-sharing service Ofo
The TalkingData report showed that the penetration rate of bike sharing services in China reached its peak in the second half of 2017 and saw a steep fall in the first quarter of 2018. “The over-competition in the industry didn’t help retain users,” the report said.
Earlier this year, bike sharing pioneer Ofo was hit by a severe cash shortage which meant it could not refund user deposits, leading to huge queues of customers waiting at its headquarters demanding their money back.
The bike sharing business in China has been through three stages over the past three years – start-up, explosive growth and shrinkage, China International Capital Corporation (CICC) said in a report. But the growth rate for ride hailing and bike sharing can still reach 15 per cent to 30 per cent, CICC forecasts.


Uber-backed e-scooter start-up Lime enters Japan after Korea exit

Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing apologises for widespread service outage in China

Can bike-sharing in China turn a profit? Survivors Meituan, Ant-backed Hello try by raising fees

China’s bicycle kingdom returns as fuel price, coronavirus bring two-wheelers back in vogue

Bike-sharing services

Alibaba confirms it is mulling further investment in bike-sharing start-up Hellobike

A sidewalk crowded with bicycles from the bike-sharing companies Ofo, Mobike and Bluegogo, near a bus stand in Beijing, China. Photo: AP

Hellobike CEO Yang Lei. Photo: Handout

Meituan Dianping-owned Mobike to pull out of some Asian countries, evaluate other markets

A man rides a tricycle transporting Mobike shared bikes near Wangfujing Street in Beijing on October 15, 2018. Photo: Reuters

Chinese bike sharing firm Ofo proposes merger with smaller rival Hellobike

A deal would make the merged entity the dominant player in the highly competitive Chinese bike sharing market 
               Local governments in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have banned companies from introducing new bikes to reduce disruption

Ofo bikes seen parked on the street in the Futian district of Shenzhen. Photo: SCMP/Roy Issa

China’s bike sharing bubble has burst – drone photography captures its casualties rusting in ‘bicycle graveyards’

Photographer Wu Guoyong travelled across the country to capture what happened when bike-sharing reached saturation point, inviting questions about the efficiency of China’s industrial machine

A bicycle graveyard in the Hongshan district of Wuhan, China. Picture: Wu Yongguo

--ONE TIME USE ONLY, DO NOT REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM WU YONGGUO-- Drone image of a bicycle graveyard, in Shanghai Hongkou, China in 2018. [29JULY2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: WU Yongguo

Pudong, Shanghai, China. Wu Guoyong: “This is the largest shared-bicycle graveyard I’ve photographed. There are more than 100,000 bicycles neatly arranged on a vast tract of unused land. It looks to me like a colourful field of flowers.” Pictures: Wu Guoyong

Mobike founder Hu Weiwei quits chief executive role at China’s leading bike-sharing firm

***PAY PER USE. Please re-download from vendor website.*** Mobike. Shutterstock

Hu Weiwei stayed with the firm after the takeover by Meituan in April. Photo: Handout

Tech

Enterprises

Bike-sharing firm has processed 12 billion orders over the past two and a half years


A survivor of the bike-sharing wars in China, Shanghai-based Hellobike continues to raise capital for its business transformation
