Ofo, a Beijing-based company founded at Peking University by graduate student Dai Wei in 2014, will release 200 bikes in the City of Sydney on Wednesday, followed by 200 bikes in Waverley Council, which includes Bondi, a week later, and another 200 bikes in the inner west a week after that.
The company, recognised as the first dockless bikeshare company in the word, operates 10 million bikes in 180 cities worldwide and plans to expand to 20 countries by the end of 2017.
Its Australian expansion comes as councils in both Sydney and Melbourne crack down on bikesharing companies, with Melbourne’s lord mayor Robert Doyle describing them as “urban clutter”.
Dockless bikeshare schemes work by getting people to download an application on their phone, which allows them to subscribe to the service, locate and unlock nearby bikes, and pay for their use.
