A History
ofo
The battle between 70+ bike-share startups (or the battle between their colors) could be traced back to the summer of 2014, when ofo (wikipedia) was started by students at the Peking University in Beijing.
ofo initially focused on bicycle tourism before deciding on bicycle sharing. At first, it was only doing campus bike sharing. In May 2015, the team appropriated the investment fund for purchasing new bicycles and enticing PKU students to partake in bicycle sharing. [PKU news] [¥9 million seed/angel]
Shared bikes became crazy in 2016. ofo took off in 2016 with ¥15 million Series A in January led by GSR Ventures 金沙江创投 and followed by Dongfang Hongdao 东方弘道, then Series A+ of ¥10 million in April and Series B of “tens of millions” USD led by Matrix China 经纬中国 in June.
Yet the fund raising didn’t stop there. ofo raised another $130 million led by Didi (C-1), Coatue (C-2), and funds affiliated with Xiaomi (C-2) in October 2016, officially marching into city businesses instead of focusing on universities.
mobike
Two major differences were separating ofo and its main competitor mobike at the beginning stage: 1) mobike focused on cities from day 1 while ofo was for universities at first 2) the locks
The first generation of ofo bikes has an unchanged passcode sent to users while mobike’s are unlocked by wireless communications between the phone, servers and the bike. mobike also uses GPS from the beginning.
Nowadays, shared bike companies are using similar product (lock) strategies for safety, management and data. [read more about smart lock technologies involved]
mobike raised its Series A of $3 million in October 2015 led by Joy Capital 愉悦资本, Series B of $10 million in August 2016 led by Panda Capital 熊猫资本, Series C of $100 million in September led by Warburg Pincus and Hillhouse Capital.
By the 2016 holiday season..
both ofo and mobike finished with their Series C with nine figures, while many other startups were just launching their services and raised their Series A, including bluegogo which would became the third largest service provider before went bankrupt and later acquired by Didi.
At that time, another startup Hellobike 哈罗单车 which would be threatening to the first-movers, was also just preparing to launch its bikes (started with 2nd/3rd tier cities) and just finished its Series A with GGV.
The frequency of fund raising is probably the most remarkable part of the history (to me).
I actually wish that something similar won’t be happening again…
Businesses, investors, users/citizens and regulators all need some time to really think over.
For bike-sharing startups, they were going to feel something different in 2017…
to be continued…