[Podcast] China Tech Talk 03: Bike sharing business models – Mobike and ofo
John and Matthew go deeper on bike sharing and respond to some listener feedback. Questions they answer: How many bikes are on the streets?How many users do Mobike and ofo have?How much are these two...
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Mobike’s May 1st travel report shows what you can do with bike-rental data
Bike rental company Mobike has released a report of its user data from the Labor Day holiday weekend, providing one of our first pictures that can be built from bike rental data and an idea of how the...
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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...
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[Podcast] China Tech Talk 04: Exclusive interview with Florian Bohnert,...
This week we switch up the format a bit to do our very first interview! Continuing our discussion of bike sharing, we invited Florian Bohnert, Head of International Expansion at Mobike, to talk about...
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Mobike co-founder sues Q&A site Zhihu for defamation
Mobike co-founder Hu Weiwei is suing the operators of Q&A website Zhihu (知乎) for defamation after a user on the site claimed Mobike staff were involved in corruption. This comes just days after a...
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Video: Behind-the-scenes at one of ofo’s largest bike makers
For China’s increasingly picky bike renters, ease of access is one of the key determinants when choosing from a rainbow of similar bikes. After all, there’s no user experience to speak of if the...
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These 4 failed directions make what ofo it is now
The best success stories often begin with failures. What we see are the hefty funding rounds, skyrocketing valuations; what we overlook are the embarrassing first efforts, setbacks and radical change...
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Shenzhen bans traffic offenders from renting bikes after deaths and injuries
Starting from June 1, users in Southern China’s city of Shenzhen will be forbidden to use bike rental services for at least one week if they are found to violate road traffic regulations. The new...
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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...
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Tencent ups the bike-rental ante with largest funding round so far
Mobike today announced that it has raised over US$600 million in Series E, the largest ever financing round in the bike-rental industry. This landmark round, putting the company at a valuation of...
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Hacking blockchain, bike-rental and robotics at the TechCrunch Shenzhen...
Shenzhen’s rainstorms didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of students, designers and coders from all over the world participating in the 2017 TechCrunch Shenzhen hackathon, co-hosted by TechNode. In teams of...
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US firm says ofo leading bike rental race in China
The public spat between Tencent’s CEO Pony Ma and GSR Ventures managing director Zhu Xiaohu over who is the most popular bike rental platform has added fuel to China’s already heated bike rental...
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Mobike co-founder: “Profit is not the most important goal for us for now”
At the Summer Davos Forum in Dalian, Hu Weiwei, co-founder and president of Mobike, took to the stage (in Chinese), dispelling rumors of a merger with ofo and explaining that they are not yet seeking...
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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...
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Bike rental startup ofo announces $700 m series E funding led by Alibaba
Bike rental platform ofo announced the completion of more than $700 million series E financing on July 6th. The current round of financing was jointly led by Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba, Hony...
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One app to unlock all bikes gets locked out by ofo and Mobike
A company that promises to aggregate almost all of China’s hire bike companies’ services into one app has seen the door access to the big players’ bikes . The app, called Quannengche (全能车 “Omni...
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Live from RISE Hong Kong—China’s sharing economy is overhyped
“Are there areas where you see there is too much hype?” Elzio Barreto, a Reuters correspondent asks three veteran China-focused venture capitalists on stage at RISE Conference in Hong Kong. He cites a...
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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...
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Ofo sued for $1.3m in wrongful death claim
2017 has been a great year for bike rental startups as they get more money and expand both domestically and internationally. However, that doesn’t mean that everything is rosy. On March 26, a boy...
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Report shows bike rentals and ride-hailing are solving China’s traffic problems
Despite their immense popularity, bike rentals in China are giving daily headaches to local governments for users’ illegal parking, vandalism, and traffic violations. But bike-rental is seeing some...
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