Dai Wei and his Ofo: Fighting till the last act?
- China
- 7 min read
- Mar 25, 2019
- By Wang Xiao'e
Dai Wei (middle) and the four Ofo co-founders riding their bright-yellow bicycles. ©Ofo
How the college student who founded a global bike-sharing sensation also led it to the verge of bankruptcy through a string of mistakes
At its peak, Ofo, the bike-sharing app from Beijing, was operating in over 250 cities across 21 countries, and used by some 200 million people. Today, the four-year-old startup, whose valuation reached nearly US$3 billion, is on the brink of bankruptcy.
Over 13 million irate users in China have been demanding the refund of their RMB 99–199 deposits since December 2018, sparking a cash-flow crisis at a company already struggling to finance a long-drawn price war as rivals flooded the market. Around the same time, its founder and CEO Dai Wei also found himself on an official blacklist f...
Over 13 million irate users in China have been demanding the refund of their RMB 99–199 deposits since December 2018, sparking a cash-flow crisis at a company already struggling to finance a long-drawn price war as rivals flooded the market. Around the same time, its founder and CEO Dai Wei also found himself on an official blacklist f...
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