This post comes courtesy of our content partners at TechNode.
Founder of Bluegogo Li Gang authored an open letter last Thursday stating that the Bluegogo has reached a strategic cooperation with Guangzhou-based Green Bike-Transit (拜客出行). Green Bike-Transit will be fully authorized to operate Bluegogo.
About the unpaid salary to Bluegogo employees, Li Gang also said, “Owing to everyone’s salary, I will try my best to solve it as soon as possible.”
Li Gang is not only the co-founder of Bluegogo but also the founder of SpeedX (野兽骑行). After Li Gang’s first smart performance bike SpeedX received RMB 150 million series B funding in November 2016, Gang established bike rental startup Bluegogo.
TechNode interviewed Li Gang in May last year when he was fully focused on SpeedX’s development. After setting the record for the most highly-funded bike on Kickstarter’s crowdfunding website, Gang was the first one to mention ‘bike innovation’ from China and was optimistic about Chinese bike’s global expansion. There was zero coverage about Ofo and Mobike at that time, and after a few months, China indeed made noise with its bike rental companies going global. However, the bike innovation story for Li Gang himself now stops here, as he admits his mistakes in managing the troubled bike company.
“I never denied my mistake. My heart is full of suffering and I am in trouble for months,” Li Gang said in the letter.
From June, Bluegogo went through a handful of problems, of which Li Gang says in his letter that “it seemed as if Bluegogo was cursed.” Both Bluegogo and SpeedX had deteriorating financial positions, and orders have been delayed. At present, Bluegogo has reportedly defaulted property costs of up to RMB 200 million and owes nearly RMB 200 million from more than 70 suppliers. Most Bluegogo and SpeedX employees have left the company.
Bluegogo ranked sixth among the top 10 bike rental startup list by Cheetah big data and belonged to iResearch’s second-tier bike rental company along with Hellobike and Youon, as they come in with average monthly active users of more than 100 million.
In January this year, Bluegogo completed a RMB 400 million Series A, valued at RMB 1 billion. But since then, financing information has not been announced. The company is about to complete Series B in March, but did not get any sum of money in the end.
As Green Bike-Transit takes over Bluegogo’s operations, China’s bike rental market is witnessing consolidations. Previously, Hellobike and Youon bike merged to survive in China’s bike rental red ocean. Wukong bike (悟空单车) and 3Vbike have halted operations, while Machi-cho bike (町町单车) failed to refund the deposit.
This post first appeared on our sister site, The Beijinger.
Photo: fairfaxstatic.com.au
