Morning Markets: Capping off a week of stock market turmoil, there’s new capital in the market for bike-sharing startups. That’s unexpected.
Today that , a China-based bike-sharing startup, has raised a new raft of cash. The precise figure is hard to nail down, but TechInAsia that the figure is around 4 billion RMB, or around $582 million as of the time of writing.
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In an emailed comment, Hellobike told Crunchbase News that it “secured billions of yuan in [its] latest round of fundraising, led by Primavera Capital and Ant Financial,” but declined to provide an exact figure.
The new funds come at an trying time for Hellobike’s sector. Leading China-based bike-sharing powerhouses and have hit troubles and landed soft exits, respectively. With those two in trouble, and scooter-focused share companies taking the limelight and, seemingly, the financial oxygen in the micromobility space, to see Hellobike raise as much as it has is surprising.
(Ofo has fallen into a cash crunch and an expectations crisis. Companies that have 聽aren’t supposed to struggle to refund deposits. And yet.)
TechInAsia that Hellobike聽handles over 20 million “daily rides” with 200 million “registered users” in 300 hundred cities in China. With tens of millions of rides daily, Hellobike’s revenue looks large from the outside. Hellobike’s scale may make the round more reasonable than we might have first guessed.
With Hellobike, as with Ofo and Mobike, we see a leading China-based tech shop taking financial interest in mobility. In this case, , an Alibaba affiliate. , a China-based tech giant, invested in Ofo in the past, making the new Hellobike聽round all the more interesting, and, if we’re being honest, confusing. Mobike, in contrast, was supported by Tencent and acquired by an affiliated company,听. (Meituan Dianping recently went public.)
Hellobike聽has now raised total, kicking off with a A. The firm’s early rounds were led by , until , a China-based car company led its Series C. Ant took the wheel with Hellobike’s Series D, leading or co-leading all subsequent rounds.
Between Ofo and Hellobike, the larger Alibaba family has huge bets in the bike space. Why, is the remaining聽question.
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