摩拜新一轮募资筹得6亿美元
Chinese bike-sharing company Mobike has attracted $600m in its latest round of fundraising led by internet group Tencent, ratcheting up the stakes in the now-global battle playing out with Didi Chuxing-backed rival ofo. Sequoia Capital, TPG and Hillhouse Capital, which had previously invested in the Beijing-based group, joined the round, according to a statement from Mobike. The offshore units of state-controlled Bank of Communications and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, as well as Singapore-based asset manager Farallon Capital, became new investors in the company. China Renaissance advised Mobike on the fundraising. Warburg Pincus and Singapore’s Temasek have previously invested in the company. Cash from high-profile investors has poured into Chinese bike-sharing businesses over the past year, fuelling a race between Mobike and ofo to take early market share in cities in China and around the globe. The craze has spawned dozens of imitation companies, of which at least 10 have secured funding from international investors. Launched just over a year ago, Mobike’s orange-wheeled bicycles have appeared on streets across China and in Singapore, and it plans to roll out in Manchester and Salford this month. It has more than 5m bikes and claims to provide 25m rides a day at peak times. Ofo raised $450m in March from Citic’s private equity arm, DST Global and China’s largest taxi-hailing company Didi Chuxing. The company has 1m bright-yellow bikes in 34 cities in China and claims to have 10m registered users, according to its website. Ofo has already launched in Singapore and is planning expansion in the UK and US. Bicycle sharing allows users to unlock and rent bikes using an application on their smartphones. The companies earn a small fee — usually less than Rmb1 ($0.15) — and the GPS data of the user’s journey, which it can use for marketing purposes. The bikes provide “last mile” transport, such as from the subway stations to offices, but the concept has caused headaches for Chinese city officials as streets have filled with poorly parked bicycles as more bike-sharing companies have entered the market. Singapore has been ground zero for the global roll out of the Chinese companies. The city-state is encouraging the use of bikes to curb carbon dioxide emissions, cut road congestion and improve citizens’ health. Manchester and Salford will be the first cities outside of Asia to find the Chinese bikes on their streets. Mobike said it has agreed to work with the city councils in the UK as well as Transport for Greater Manchester, to monitor its June 29 launch to ensure it does not inconvenience others and to share data on users’ travel patterns for better city planning. Ofo has run small trials in the UK, including a few hundred bicycles in Cambridge and an unspecified number in London. |