Ofo is a Beijing-based bike-sharing startup founded in 2014 that operates a shared bicycle platform. The company claims 200 million users who generate 32 million transactions per day. Ofo has been engaged in an expensive rivalry with Mobike, and both companies together hold over 90% of China’s bike-sharing market. Founder and CEO Dai Wei said the company is transitioning from rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development and will prioritize customers, technological innovation and efficient operations. Ofo has been expanding into other countries while facing cash pressures amid intense competition and the collapse of many smaller bike-sharing startups. To address financing needs it raised new capital in a round led by Alibaba. Ofo operates a QR-code unlocked bike-sharing service, with each bicycle carrying a GPS chip and users starting rides by scanning a code. Since its launch two years ago, Ofo says it has provided more than two billion rides to over 100 million users. The company has connected 6.5 million bikes to riders in 150 cities across five countries and reports peak activity of 25 million rides per day. Ofo plans to grow its fleet to more than 20 million bikes, expand to 200 cities by the end of 2017, and has recently expanded to the U.K., U.S., and Singapore. Financially, Ofo raised a $700M Series E led by Alibaba, Hony Capital and CITIC Private Equity, with participation from existing backers including Didi and DST Global and an earlier Ant Financial investment. The company says it will use the funding to upgrade service, accelerate global expansion, and continue leading the bike-sharing industry. Ofo operates a bike-sharing rental platform and has claimed unicorn status. The company announced Ant Financial as an investor and strategic partner to work on internet and credit-card payments and to support international expansion. Ant Financial had already been a strategic partner: Ofo began using Ant Financial’s Sesame Credit system to let qualifying users rent bikes without a deposit. Two months prior Ofo closed a $450 million Series D that it says raised its valuation to more than $1 billion; that round was led by DST Global, Matrix China, CITIC, and Didi Chuxing. Ofo says it wants to be the world’s largest bike rental platform and plans to work with Ant Financial to expand into new countries. The tie-up with Ant Financial is framed as strengthening Ofo’s position against rival Mobike, which has backers including Tencent and Foxconn. Ofo operates a dockless, app-driven bicycle rental service that uses GPS-tagged bikes to enable on-demand rentals without fixed stations. The company charges a low user fee (reported around 1 CNY per hour) and faces margin questions given that pricing. Ofo has acknowledged operational risks including vandalism and concerns about how user deposits are handled in the industry. The company claims significant scale: more than one million cycles rented since June to over 20 million registered users and operations across close to 40 Chinese cities. Ofo says it is in the early stages of expanding into the U.S., UK and Singapore. Financially it has attracted large investor capital, positioning itself aggressively against rivals in a heavily funded sector. Ofo operates a bike-sharing platform that lets people borrow bicycles across Chinese cities. The company was founded two years ago as part of a startup program at Peking University. Ofo claims to have 70,000 bikes across 20 cities, 1.5 million registered users, and about 500,000 rides per day. The startup has drawn strategic interest from larger mobility players as it scales its fleet and user base. Its recent capital activity includes fundraising earlier in the month and a new investment announced alongside Didi Chuxing. Future possibilities discussed in coverage include integration into Didi’s app and using bike riders for services like food delivery and couriering.

Total raised

$2.0B

Funding rounds

6

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Mar 2018