BICYCLE SHARING

Putian BikeSharing

Jiahao Yang

http://www.aiainews.com/science-technology/2017/03/01/47016.html

Bikesharing, as a new kind of share economy, is trending in China this year.Countless bikes have been put in the market to solve the problem of the lastmile between underground stations and neighborhood areas. Companies like OFOand MOBIKE, which are viewed as two unicorn company in China, have alreadydominate the market of first-tier and second-tier cities. Lots of investorshave invested in these two companies.

Then, a company named KARA showed up in themarket. It believed that although bike sharing market in developed cities hadbeen occupied, in third-tier or four-tier cities, there’s still much blankspace. So it copied what those two giant companies did in developed cities andimplemented in a third-tier city called Putian. KARA skipped the process ofplanning and went directly to implementation and delivered the bikes to customers.

As a result, 76% lost rate of bikes werereported after one week and the company went bankrupt right away. It failedbecause it didn’t plan it thoroughly beforehand. Bike sharing market indeveloping cities weren’t a blank space for no reason. People in these citieswere much less educated compared to people in developed cities. They had norespect to share economy and claimed authority to every bike that they broke thelock of it.