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  • November 2018 (Revised June 2019)
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ofo

By: Mitchell Weiss
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:20
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Abstract

Dai Wei and his co-founders grew Beijing-based ofo from a school-based startup to a bike-share behemoth in a matter of months, topped an all-out market-share battle fueled with almost $1 billion in venture capital, provided 2 billion bicycle rides, soaked up the majority of the bike manufacturing capacity in all of China, and then, in July of 2017, hit pause. The proximate reason for halting their purchase of new bicycles was a supply imbalance: ofo had many more bikes on their way than they did the smart-locks that allowed their customers to unlock them with their cell phones. But the breather would also give ofo’s leaders a chance to re-assess their plans for the rest of the year. For how long, to what end, and at what cost to wage their market-share battle with main rival, Mobike? How aggressively to pursue their international expansion and what adjustments, if any, to make from their model in dozens of Chinese cities? And what to do about the concerns from government officials that ofo’s dockless bikes and those of dozens of competitors were creating hazards on city streets? Wei and four schoolmates at Peking University had launched ofo on their campus with 1,000 bikes in fall 2015. Since then, they had deployed 6.5 million. The question now was how many more?

Keywords

Ofo; Bikeshare; Scale; Platforms; Government As A Platform; Platform Mechanics; Dai Wei; Dockless Bikes; Mobike; Bike-share; Online-to-offline; Mobility; Digital Platforms; Infrastructure; Transportation; Bicycle Transportation; Growth and Development Strategy; Bicycle Industry; China; Beijing

Citation

Weiss, Mitchell. "ofo." Harvard Business School Case 819-063, November 2018. (Revised June 2019.)
  • Educators

About The Author

Mitchell B. Weiss

Entrepreneurial Management
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Related Work

    • June 2019 (Revised December 2019)
    • Faculty Research

    ofo

    By: Mitch Weiss and Mariana Oseguera Rodriguez
    • November 2018 (Revised June 2019)
    • Faculty Research

    ofo

    By: Mitchell Weiss
Related Work
  • ofo By: Mitch Weiss and Mariana Oseguera Rodriguez
  • ofo By: Mitchell Weiss
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