Was oBike just building to sell?

WHEN oBike exited Singapore this week, it cited difficulties in complying with the new bike-sharing regulations. But The Business Times uncovered that financial pressures could have played just as big a part in its pull-out: The homegrown bike-sharing operator had cash flow woes, had run up a loss of more than S$4 million in 2017, and had been looking for an acquirer (though that came to naught).

oBike had been hoping to get lucky, as did its rival Mobike. In April, Mobike got acquired for US$2.7 billion by Meituan-Dianping, one of China's largest providers of on-demand online services. The deal might have seemed like a feat for Mobike, but observers scorned the acquisition amount, saying it was little compared to the US$928 million in venture capital Mobike had raised before its buyout.

In many ways, oBike might just be a startup founded with the goal of being acquired someday. When it launched in Singapore in April last year, it did little to differentiate itself from the players who were quicker to burst on the scene: ofo (February 2017) and Mobike (March 2017). When the China-based players added more and better-performing bicycles across the island, oBike did the same.