Page 22 - Forbes - Asia (June 2018)
P. 22
FORBES ASIA
TRANSPORTATION
Chris Taylor in downtown
Seattle. He leads Ofo’s
business in the U.S., where
the company now has
40,000 bikes.
Wheels of Fortune
Can China’s Ofo export its bicycle-sharing scheme to a car-loving America?
BY BIZ CARSON
van pulls up to a warehouse on the south side of in which bikes don’t lock to a station but have electronic locks
Seattle, unloading yellow bikes and placing them on the tires that click open with the scan of a bar code. hat
in a repair line. It looks nothing like the bicycle means anyone can ride a bike anywhere and leave it there for
graveyards found outside repair shops in China, the next person to pick up.
A e thousands of bikes lie abandoned and he Beijing-based company has 15 million bikes across the IAN COBLE FOR FORBES
wher
rusting, but the same company logo appears: Ofo. globe and an estimated valuation of $3 billion, according to
Four-year-old Ofo was a pioneer in dockless bike-sharing, PitchBook. Ofo raised $866 million in an Alibaba-led funding
20 | FORBES ASIA JUNE 2018
