Forget Uber: A Unique Bike Sharing Startup “Mobike” Raised $215 M to Get 10 M Bikes on Road

With our imagination we can do wonders. As imagination is about seeing the impossible, or unreal. But bringing a little effort to the things we have in our mind is really helpful. Sometimes we even have to quit our dream job in order to bring our imagination to life. In our everyday life we come across many such examples.

One such example is that of David Wang. Two years ago he quit his job as General Manager of Uber in Shanghai. David left the job with the thought of creating an Uber for bikes.

Forget Uber: A Unique Bike Sharing Startup “Mobike” Raised $215 M to Get 10 M Bikes on Road. David Wang introduced his company, Mobike a year ago. The bikes have a pedal-powered GPS, smart lock and timer.

Users can find a bike and unlock it with Mobike App. The bike charges 15c per hour and when the users are done they can leave it.

Forget Uber: A Unique Bike Sharing Startup “Mobike” Raised $215 M to Get 10 M Bikes on Road

David was pretty sure that the key to his notion was creating his own low cost, high tech bikes. So he started bike-building, and launched the service in Shanghai in April last year.

The bikes were so prevalent that in August he enticed $10 million from Panda Capital. After a month he elevated another $100 million from renowned VCs.

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By the end of 2016, Mobike’s Shanghai GM, Michael Yao said:

“We just announced passing the 100,000th bike in Shanghai earlier this month. We are currently operating in nine cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Ningbo, Xiamen, Foshan and Wuhan.”

Shanghai has now become the No.1 bike-sharing city in the world, and China is now generating more ride-sharing bikes than all the rest of the world draw up.

This month Mobike raised $215 million from Tencent and a group of VCs, probable at an estimate of more than $1 billion. Xiaofeng has signed a deal with Foxconn which will get 10 million Mobikes on the road by the end of this year.

Currently the Startup is Operating in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Ningbo, Xiamen, Foshan and Wuhan

Almost 2 years after starting his company, David has 1.5 million consumers taking 500,000 bike rides every day. That’s 1.5 million users getting strong and improving the air quality of China’s cities each day. Now he is planning to extend the service to 100 cities in China and globally by the end of this year.

In his announcement of the Foxconn contract, David said,

“In 2017, we aim to enable residents in a hundred cities in China and internationally to enjoy our unique and convenient solution. That solution is the bicycle, invented in 1817 (and celebrating its 200th birthday this year), with some high tech upgrades.”

It can be said that David took over a 200 year old invention and turned it into a billion dollar startup.

Its not important to use technical or extraordinary things to start a business. Sometimes the simplest things become the best ideas.

Actually the technology that David is using for his bikes is easily available to anyone to start such a company. The only thing different is that he didn’t only think but took action. As it is said that “Action speaks louder than words”, so only imagining things is of no use we must do something as well.