Ofo, the last remaining major independent player in the China’s bike-sharing industry, resists Didi’s acquisition offer – bucking the consolidation trend, per South China Morning Post’s article on May 15.
Last Monday, Ofo’s co-founder and CEO Dai Wei held a meeting to encourage the company to stay the course and to not give in despite the odds. He likened the company’s current status to the film – ‘Dark Times’, where Churchill allowed for sacrifices to resist the appeasement policy with the Nazis. According to the people, Dai Wei even opened the option for people to leave the company if they do not want to fight till the end.
Today’s bike-sharing market has changed significantly – Hellobike is a new addition to the duopoly. Hellobike is rising rapidly – a dominant brand in tier-two, tier-three, tier-four cities, with support of Ant Financials and Fosun International and additional traffic support via Alipay, while Mobike bicylces were sold to Meituan-Dianping for US$3.7 billion in April – offering the best connection to complete the latter’s suite of services.
According to data from Analysys in February 2018, the top three bike-sharing platforms in terms of active user sharing are Ofo, Mobike and Hellobike with 50.89%, 49.14% and 5.64% respectively.
Source: All Weather TMT (Chinese)