Singapore’s oBike gets on its bike: proof you can ‘kill your innovators’?
Bicycle-sharing firm’s exit amid greater regulation prompts some to warn Lion City against choking off risk-taking businesses
Singapore’s bike-sharing firm oBike is pulling out from its home city amid a clampdown by transport authorities aimed at cutting indiscriminate parking – prompting some analysts to claim the Lion City is choking off innovation.
oBike, a start-up that launched less than two years ago and in its heyday had operations in two dozen countries, announced its exit from the Lion City on Monday, a couple of weeks after it pulled out from Melbourne. The announcement came shortly after GBikes, another Singaporean firm, announced it would stop operations in the Lion City on July 7.
oBike, famous for its bright yellow bikes, decided to fold after officials in both Singapore and Melbourne introduced rules to cut down on the number of bikes parked haphazardly – or dumped – in public places such as pedestrian walkways, parks and even rivers. Since its inception, bike-sharing, which was first popularised in China by Mobike and Ofo, has been characterised by indiscriminate parking and vandalism.
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In Asia, oBike is still available in Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Indonesia. In Australia, it is still operating in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane. In an interview with This Week in Asia in October, co-founder Edward Chen said oBike had more than two million users across Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
In a Facebook post, oBike, which in Singapore has amassed over a million users, said its bikes could still be rented via GrabCycle, a bike-sharing service owned by ride-hailing giant Grab. The claim was later refuted by Grab, which said its platform now only offered bikes operated by another Singaporean firm, Anywheel.
“We understand that oBike has decided to cease operations in Singapore due to their difficulties in meeting regulatory guidelines,” a Grab spokeswoman told This Week in Asia. “This means we will no longer be able to offer oBike’s bicycles on the GrabCycle marketplace, as oBike will not have the appropriate bike-sharing licence to operate in Singapore, nor will they be maintaining their fleet of bicycles.”
Under the new rules, operators would need to apply for a licence from the transport authority. Not only would this regulate fleet sizes, it would require operators to remove illegally parked bicycles within a stipulated amount of time and install QR code geofencing technology that would require operators to continuously charge users who do not park their bike in designated areas. oBike deemed the move would be too costly.
