Ubike, a Shanghai-based bike maker and bike sharing app, raised RMB 150 million (USD 22 million) financing, local tech blog 36Kr on Monday reported.
The round of financing is led by China’s V Capital , followed Blackhole Capital and the startup’s angel investors including Zhonglu Capital, whose parent company owns Forever. Forever is a well-established domestic bike maker and operates the bikes for Shanghai government’s bike rental project.
The additional capital will be used to produce more bikes.
The startup is hatching plans to take over China by storm: first by partnering with local government and enabling users accessing public bikes via the app, and second by producing bikes at lower cost with the help of bike maker Forever.
There are 80,000 bikes under Shanghai government’s bike rental project, and these will be available on Ubike app, according to 36Kr. The manufacture cost of every Ubike is planned to be less than RMB 1,000, one third of that by its competitor Mobike.
The startup is scheduled to launch bikes in middle Novembers.
In bike sharing filed, the company competes domestically with the likes of Mobike, ofo, and Xiaoming Danche. Mobike and ofo is the two largest player in the field by disclosed financing amount.
Mobike in late September announced USD 100 million financing from Sequoia Capital and Hillhouse Capital, before its rival ofo in early October raised USD 130 million financing backed by China’s largest ride-hailing platform Didi Chuxing, Vision Capital, Yuri Milner and so on.
Still, Ubike sees an opportunity to take on these players by providing more bikes and producing bikes at lower cost.
(Top photo from Biketo.com)