UniBike
Founder: Ke Yuze
Founded in: 2016
Financing status: RMB 100 million (USD 14.5 million) Series A financing in 2017
UniBike is a bike-sharing startup backed by Mobike with a USD 7 million investment in 2016. It started placing its bikes on college campuses, and it has now secured a new financing round with the release of its new bike version to be placed in cities.
Both versions of its bikes are blue in color, but its new bike version meant for use in the cities is different from the campus bike version. The city bike version is equipped with a Bluetooth-enabled lock rather than the intelligent lock on the campus bike version.
UniBike had its pre-Series A financing round last year, and this Series A round was led by a group of undisclosed investors. The financing will be used to place its new bikes across Chinese cities, starting with 50,000 bikes in Beijing.
Powerbank rental startup Guaishou Chongdian receives millions in USD for angel round
Guaishou Chongdian
Founder: Cai Guangyuan
Financing status: Tens of millions in RMB (a few million USD) for angel round in 2017
Guaishou Chongdian is a power bank rental startup that collaborates with other businesses to place its power banks at their stores to enable customers to charge mobile phones easily. Guaishou Chongdian’s founder Cai Guangyuan previously worked for Uber as a general manager and marketing director in Shanghai, and the founding team are made of members who previously worked at Meituan, Uber, Alibaba and Baidu.
By partnering with other businesses to place its rental power banks at their stores, this new way of placing rental power banks have some advantages. First, it makes them more exclusive than its competitors. Also, as compared to other power bank rental models, it achieves economies of scale with a cost of only RMB 100 to manufacture one power bank. In addition, these rentals can be extended to ordering, payment and membership system.
This angel financing round was led by Shunwei Capital, Xiaomi, Zmifi, Crystal Stream and Hillhouse Capital. The company plans to use the fund to place tens of millions of power banks in its partner’s stores to quickly capture market share.
Powerbank rental startup Hema Chongdian receives millions in USD for angel round
Hema Chongdian
Founder: Wang Run
Founded in: 2016
Financing status: Tens of millions in RMB (a few million USD) for angel round in 2017
Hema Chongdian is a power bank rental startup that places its power banks in several businesses such as restaurants and cafés. This is to enable customers to charge their phones easily while they are at partner stores. Founded in 2016 in Beijing, founder Wang Run previously worked in Baidu managing its wireless video product unit. Hema’s power banks are placed on top of tables at its partners’ stores, achieving economies of scale.
Users can pay RMB 1 per hour to use the power banks deposit free while they are at partner stores. In addition, Hema Chingdian’s power banks has in-built charging lines for three charging interfaces including Lightning, Micro-USB and Type-C.
This angel round funding was from Plum Ventures, Vertex Ventures and Gaowei Fund. The fund will be used to manufacture 100,000 power banks and place them in more than 10,000 of its partners’ stores.
（Top photo from Uniike.com）
