Bike-sharing firms export their own brand of innovation

BEIJING - China has surprised the world with its economic innovations, with leading bike-sharing companies gearing up for global expansion.

Mobike, one of China's largest bike-sharing operators, will launch an initial 1,000 bikes in Manchester and Salford in the United Kingdom on June 29.

This will make the UK the latest in a string of overseas markets that Chinese bike-sharing companies have entered, including the United States, Singapore and Kazakhstan.

"The surging growth of China's bike-sharing sector should be attributed to young people's entrepreneurship," said Huang He, a professor at the School of Business of Yeshiva University in the United States. "It is about abundant capital from angel investors and strong support from the Chinese authorities."

Still, Mobike, its most successful domestic competitor Ofo Inc, and BlueGoGo have met with challenges in the European Union, the US and Singaporean markets, where traditional bike-sharing companies with docking stations have gained market dominance.

In Europe, more than 550 cities have bike sharing systems. US operators Bicycles/SoBi and Motivate for instance have also started to look at the European market.

Industry insiders stressed that bike-sharing companies should pay adequate attention to every city's unique characteristics when they try to seek market share.

"Every city has its own characteristics ... different needs, different topography: hilly or not hilly, and also the community you are getting into is important," said Niccolo Panozzo, smarter cycling project coordinator at the European Cyclists' Federation.

With the same awareness, Mobike announced it would work with Manchester and Salford city councils as well as Transport for Greater Manchester to monitor and push for orderly use of its bikes.

"We need to take a lot of time to make a foreign city believe that a Chinese company is able to operate bike-share well," Hu Weiwei, founder of Mobike, said, adding that the company needs to learn how to deal with local governments.

Mobike has also rolled out some localized measures to meet Manchester's regulations.

For instance, the initial batch of bikes set to arrive in the northern England city will be equipped with head lamps and rear lamps.

Local riders can also use credit cards to pay for the bike rent through Mobike's smartphone app.

Many investors and observers have noticed that Chinese innovations and business models have been spreading to the rest of the world.

A recent report by the Wall Street Journal quoted a US venture capitalist as saying that some tech companies, like Apple and a startup called LimeBike, have provided "services, such as mobile wallets and bike-sharing apps, that imitate those offered by Chinese rivals".

Xinhua