Chinese Bikeshare Company Looks Set to Raise $1.3 Billion

Beijing / China

Qingju, which is the bike sharing unit of Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing as raised US$600 million (A780 million) in its Series B round of financing and is set to raise a further US$400 million (A$520 million) in loans, according to the financial media site Deal Street Asia.

A Didi spokesperson said, “Didi Bike (Qingju) has recently completed a Series B fundraising round. With the new investment, we will continue to improve mid and short distance travel in cities, by providing efficient, safe and reliable bike sharing services to the users.

Qungju had previously raised US$1billion (A$1.3 billion) in April 2020 being US$850 million (A$1.1 billion) from it’s parent company Didi and US$150 million (A$195 million) from Legend Capital and SoftBank.

Qingju, which started operations in 2018 is now one of the three major players in China. It’s two main competitors are Hellobike and Meituan Bike. The total bike share market in China is estimated to have a staggering 569 million users.

Shanghai based Hellobike, backed by Alibaba’s fintech spin-out Ant Broup, had operations in over 460 Chinese cities as of October 2020.

Meituan Bike was originally Mobike before being acquired by food delivery giant Meituan for US$2.7 billion (A$3.5 billion) in April 2018 and being rebranded in 2019.

This article was first published in Deal Street Asia.