So more than a year after Meituan acquired MoBike, one of the two leading bike sharing companies in China, what happened?
The business has largely been integrated into Meituan – and users are encouraged to use Meituan App to unlock the bikes.
This provides Meituan a cheap and effective way to lock in the users – cheap because the capita fueled money burning war is long over.
Maybe one day soon the bikes will become profitable – just like several leading powerbank sharing companies have become, quietly.
MoBike as a stand-alone company never had that opportunity.
Rumours are saying that MoBike founder wanted to head to Indonesia to build an electric bike business, but gave up after realising the challenge of localisation.
Perhaps what annoyed the former MoBike employees the most is the following:
Yes the colour of the bikes in the street are being repainted yellow – the colour of MoBike’s arch rival Ofo.
But then, who cares?
