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