Ofo (company)

Ofo (ˈoʊfoʊ), stylised as ofo, was a Beijing-based bicycle sharing company founded in 2014. It used a dockless system with a smartphone app to unlock and locate nearby bicycles, charging an hourly rate for use. In 2017, it had deployed over 10 million bicycles in 250 cities and 20 countries. The company was valued at up to US$2 billion and had over 62.7 million monthly active users. In 2018, Ofo announced massive reduction in operations, including withdrawing from most US cities and from several entire countries. By 2020, facing a large amount of unpayable debt, the company was no longer operating bike rentals. The company was founded in 2014 by five members of the Peking University cycling club as a project that initially focused on bicycle tourism before deciding on bicycle sharing. It was named "Ofo" due to the word's resemblance to a cyclist on a bicycle. Ofo was launched in June 2015 in Beijing, gaining 20,000 users and 2,000 bicycles by October with investment funding from a Peking University alumnus. In 2016, Ofo expanded to other cities in China, and had a fleet of 85,000 bicycles by the end of the year. The company raised US$130 million in funding from tech firms Xiaomi and Didi Chuxing in September 2016, allowing it to expand outside China. A Series D funding round in February 2017, led by Didi Chuxing and Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies, raised US$450 million for Ofo and valued the company at$1 billion. Ofo began expanding outside China in 2017, with launches in Singapore in February 2017; Cambridge, United Kingdom in April; Seattle, United States in August; and Sydney, Australia in October. In April 2017, it was announced that the United Nations Development Programme has started a partnership to raise public awareness on climate changes. The partnership project, 1 KM Action, led to another collaboration with the Clara Lionel Foundation, an organisation founded by Rihanna, which aims to provide bikes and scholarships to girls in Malawi. The same month, Ofo announced an undisclosed amount of funding from Ant Financial, an Alibaba affiliate.