Ofo: Cycling in over $700 million in fund raiser

Ofo, a very popular Chinese bicycle sharing start-up has aimed on worldwide expansion, claiming that it brought over $700 million up in a fund raiser. Dai Wei, the CEO of Ofo said that they are trying to redesign their administration for better client experiences and aiming to accelerate their worldwide expansion methodology.

The fund raiser was driven by Alibaba, CITIC Private Equity and Hony Capital, with particular interest from DST Global and Didi Chuxing. This is the first time Alibaba has tossed its hat into China’s rapidly developing bicycle sharing industry, which has grown as an alternative to taxis, ride-hailing mobile applications and other transportation alternatives for some individuals taking short cross country excursions in China. Clients only need to scan the QR code printed on a bike to begin their ride, and with each bicycle conveying a GPS device they can be left anywhere when the ride is over.

Ofo is also looking at the worldwide Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) tech for broad business utilization. This move will enable Chinese Telecom to provide Ofo with countrywide Internet access, while Huawei will furnish Ofo bicycles with NB-IoT chips and other media transmission devices such as GPS chips.

China’s bicycle sharing industry has been fuelled with upstarts, for example, Ofo, working parallel to Beijing Mobike Technology and others aiming at enhancing urban mobility across the country and providing an ecological transport method.

Investors have realized that the potential this market holds is very great, to some measure due to the stress over various industries to reduce the carbon emissions. And they have emptied their sizable wallets full of cash as a fuel into this preheated industry.

A month ago, Mobike claimed to have brought up $600 million up in a fund raiser driven by web giant Tencent Holdings and joined by TPG, Sequoia and Hillhouse Capital, etc.

According to Ofo, it currently has more than 6.5 million bicycles in 150 cities. Before the year is up, Ofo said plan to supply convey 20 million bicycles to the bicycle sharing industry and to extend its services to be available to 200 cities in 20 nations around the globe.