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 months after the bike-rental startup secured a US$450 million series D in March, which the company said was the largest amount in a single funding round in the sector.
Prior to the new funding round, ofo had already struck a strategic cooperation deal last month with Sesame Credit, the social credit scoring system developed by Ant Financial, allowing Shanghai ofo users with a Sesame Credit score of 650 or higher can register on the app without making the RMB 99 deposit.
Ant Financial CEO Jing Xiandong said the company will set an example for the bike-rental sector through this cooperation with ofo, and fully unleash their potential in the mobile platform, credit management, online payment, risk management and safety control.
It is no wonder ofo chooses to team up with Ant Financial, which is the operator of Alipay and other Alibaba-backed financial services, while ofo’s arch rival Mobike has worked closely with WeChat (Mobike’s bike-rental feature was added to WeChat Wallet last month). In China’s third-party online payment, Alipay and WeChat Payment remain the top two players, each with a 54.1% and 37.02% share in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Dai Wei earlier revealed the company is worth US$ 2 billion, takes in over RMB 10 million in revenue a day, and will hopefully turn a profit this year.