What's the connection between oBike and the ICOs (besides Yi Shi beeing involved in both)?
OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#22I've seen these bikes in some crazy places. There seems to be a minority of people who take joy in leaving them in not so easy to reach places.
2 examples I've seen.
- In the middle of a forest with at least 2KM of trail before the bike could be reached.
- Inside a secure defence facility.
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#23As someone who is not familiar with oBike or the situation, could someone clue me in as to what happened? My guess is that the company signed up a bunch of people, took a sizeable deposit from all of them, and then cut and run? Where does the ICO (or ICOs) come into the picture?
They were notorious for dumping bikes all over Melbourne, Australia. A city that takes its liveability seriously. Eventually the government told oBike they would be given a $3,000 fine for every bike in violation, which is obviously far more than the small cost of the bike itself. They left soon afterwards. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-12/obike-dockless-bicycle...
> A city that takes its liveability seriously.
Not sure I can take that seriously seeing how much Melbourne favours cars and is spending billions building more roads.
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at aerial photography of Melbourne, it there are an awful lot of cars for a city that takes its liveability seriously. I can't imagine that bikes were taking MORE space than the cars?
Melbourne has the world's largest tram network. It has a massive train 869km train network too, plus current construction of a new $10 billion tunnel in the city center. Cars are allowed in the city center, but they are mostly commercial vehicles (taxis, delivery drivers, construction, etc). Most people use public transport to commute to and from work. Many bike share schemes have been tried, but are not popular in M…
> Cars are allowed in the city center, but they are mostly commercial vehicles
This is not true at all, a ridiculous number of people drive to work and park in the city. Over 60% of all traffic is private cars.
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#25OBike is also pulling all 600 bikes out of Zürich, Switzerland but there was no reason given, just that OBike will pay for the removal. [1]
[1] https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/veloverleih-in-zuerich-o-bike-zie...
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#26It looks like there is only a couple million $$ of paid up share capital in the paper trail. How did they finance purchase of so many oBikes?
There’s a screenshot showing bikes selling for $199 RMB ($30USD) in China. With a $49SGD ($36USD) deposit they could afford to buy one for every user and still have cash left over.
I’m aware that they’re low cost, they’re everywhere in sydney. I guess I just am trying to look at the unit economics and reverse engineer the business fundamentals. The bikes came before the users, and i guess even with a couple thousand (probably high end numbers now I think about it) bikes in sydney, Melbourne and then 10s is thousands (if that) in Singapore they could do it with a small capital base, especially with almost no support on the labour side.
Then again they ended up having to spend a lot of money in Melbourne cleaning them up which would have buggered their modelling.
Bottom line of my comment above: the bikes has to come first with a reasonable lead time before the deposit. I see now that they could have borrowed against it as well but it doesn’t look like they had large inflows of PE or VC money?
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
oBike was also troublesome here in Switzerland. People just left them left and right wherever they pleased.
That's kind of the idea I guess, find a bike and you can ride it. But that's too socialist, no money to be made in that, and a lot of trashed bikes everywhere.
I can tell you haven't tried, because otherwise you'd mention the €79 deposit and that they felt like riding a home trainer.
I think it was a scam. The idea was to take people's deposits and then declare bankruptcy.
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#28obike shut down? I remember they were all over Amsterdam last year
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bike sharing company in Singapore. Initially collected a S$49 to use its service. With the deposit paid you were entitled to rent their bikes at S$0.5/15min. Bike were almost everywhere. Initially they had lots of free ride promotions. A few days ago, they claimed that they ceased operations due to newly imposed government restrictions. (To prevent bikes from lying/standing around just about everywhere and have them…
S$49 is I guess not that big a loss for a bicycle, buying one yourself is probably more expensive. What happens to the bikes then? I can imagine they're being stored left and right now.
Here's an idea - "upcycling"
https://mobile.twitter.com/tamberg/status/101308570823448576...
Re: OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia
#30I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to shut down one subsidary and not return the deposits if the rest of the company continues operating.
In general, aren't the stock owners (the parent companies) non-liable for the operations of the limited-liability corporation (the subsidiary)?