Mobike co-founder: Working in the US helped form the bike-sharing idea

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China’s leading bike-sharing company, Mobike, is speeding up its overseas business this year, with US becoming the eighth foreign country the its orange bikes have ridden into this September.

After about two years of operation, Mobike is now offering service in 180 cities across the world, of which 15 cities are in those eight foreign countries. The Mobike app now has over 200 million registered users globally.

One of the factors behind Mobike’s rather smoothly going global strategy, according to co-founder and CTO Xia Yiping, is his own working experience back in the US.

People riding bikes of Mobike in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, US. /Mobike’s weibo webpage

Xia used to work in the field of connected cars in the US, which helped him understand how to work in a global team and a global environment.

At that time, a major part of Xia’s daily job was to collect data and monitor vehicle health, and be able to provide real-time information to the users as well as the dealers.

“I used that working experience, especially from the technical side, as a foundation when I started Mobike,” said Xia.

The platform currently deals with more than 30 million trips per day, and can real-time manage over eight million bikes.

VCG Photo

That huge operation capacity, though challenging, helps generate tons of data that in turn could be used to better manage the growing number of bikes, and to lift users’ experience.

China in recent years has been leading in smart phone penetration and mobile payment, which enables millions of users to quickly get on with the new service.

That’s why Xia and his partners gained huge business success by starting in China.

“China has the most mobile internet users in the world, which makes a uniquely advantageous foundation for Mobike to start,” Xia said.