Bicycle sharing

Ofo is a Beijing-based bicycle sharing company founded in 2014. A $450M February 2017 funding round valued the company at $1 billion. The company claims over 20 million registered users.

Overview
Ofo is a "non-docking" platform for users to create what is said to be the world's first bike sharing company. It allows a true bike-sharing model where riders can provide the use of their own bicycles for access to the companies entire team. The "non-docking" platform is committed to solving the traffic problem of urban congestion. Firstly, users need to download the Ofo application, then type in the number on the bicycle and obtain a passcode. Secondly, the user need to turn the dial on the lock for each number in the passcode aligns with a yellow indicator. Once the passcode is in, simply press the round button to unlock.Thirdly, when the user finishs the trip and wants to return the bike, it simply leaves the bike in any area where bike-parking is allowed. It then becomes ready for the next user. There is no need to find a specially designated docking station.

Unlike rival Mobike bicycles, Ofo bicycles don't have GPS tracking and automatic locks, making Ofo's business model rely on lower costs of the bikes.

History
Ofo was started as a student project in 2014 by eventual PhD dropout Dai Wei and four fellow students from Peking University. They studied cycle tourism before deciding on bike sharing as a business model.

Funding
In February 2017, investors including investment group DST Global, ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing and CITIC's private equity arm combined in a $450 million funding round. Earlier investors included Didi as well, and Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi.

Description
Ofo creates a new pattern that the user can unlock the bike anytime and anywhere through an online password. OFO has connected more than 2.5 million shared bicycles and provided almost 500 million times shared bicycle services since its inception in June 2015. It also provided convenient travel services for more than 30 million users in 46 cities around the world.The application has booked more than 100 million rides in 2017.

From the Andrews download data can be seen, Ofo totally download times is higher than the competitor Mobike. This is due to Ofo more early on the line in 2015. From 1th September to 31th October, Mobike download data increased by 529%, and Ofo increased by 176%. It can be seen as the recent two capital intervention months, the both market are gradually expanding. The number of users is increasing and development is particularly rapid. From the App Store ranking can be seen, the Ofo is much higher than the competitors which became the most popular on Apple's China app store, boasting over half a million downloads a day.

Ofo has cooperated with the maker of Alipay which is China's largest online payment platform. Alipay covers the most of China's internet payment markets now, and in the current market share of mobile payment service applications is relatively huge in China. There were 75.7 million Internet payment users in China as of June 2009, representing 22.4% of the 338 million Chinese Internet users. The number of mobile payment service subscribers reached only 19.2 million by June 2009, accounting for 12.4% of the 155 million Chinese mobile Internet users. The data continued rapidly increase.

The theme of Ofo is "riding can be easier". It has a hope of the future do not produce bicycles but only to connect the bike, people can be unlocked the bike to meet the needs of short distance travel in every corner of the world. Ofo connects about 10 million registered users with over 1,000,000 bikes across 34 cities in China. At the same time, the platform welcome users to share their bicycles to join Ofo economic innovation model through internet to mobilize the city bicycle stock market and improve the efficiency of bicycle use, it is good to save more space for the city and advocate civilized vehicles.Now Ofo is taking its technology and vision to the US, the UK, and Singapore.