SG Bike Completes Takeover of Mobike License in Singapore

Singapore’s homegrown bike-sharing startup SG Bike Pte Ltd (SG Bike) announced today that it has completed its takeover of the local license of Chinese startup Mobike.

The deal was first announced in August by ISOTeam, the Singapore-listed company that owns 51 per cent of the bike-sharing startup. Mobike is licensed to operate 25,000 shared bikes. This license has now been transferred to SG Bike.

The Singapore startup acquired the license for $1.85 million. Aside from the license, the startup also paid the security deposit paid by Mobike to the Land Transportation Authority of Singapore in the amount of $550,000.  It also paid $422,800 for the 25,000 bicycles, each with the IoT smart lock installed, from Mobike.

“The Land Transport Authority has approved and effected the license transfer from Mobike to SG Bike and we will be transiting to operate the full 25,000 bicycles in Singapore. To ease the transition, we will allow the public to unlock Mobike bicycles for free,” SG Bike said in a statement.

From today onwards, all existing Mobike bicycles will be made available on the SG Bike app for hire. The app will be able to unlock both SG Bike and Mobike bicycles and the Mobile Singapore app will no longer be usable to unlock bicycles.

Existing Mobike users can now transfer and convert their account credit and ride pass to the homegrown bike-sharing startup’s account credit and ride pass, according to the announcement.

Established in August 2017, SG Bike is Singapore’s very first homegrown bike-sharing company. As a subsidiary under ISOTeam, it is also the first bike-sharing company to aim to resolve indiscriminate parking through its self-developed technology, Geostation.

“As a local company, we are excited to begin this journey to provide our nation with a fleet size of 25,000 bicycles,” said the startup’s Chief Operating Officer Sean Tay.

“Bicycles remain as the most flexible transport mode and we believe this position will allow SG Bike to accelerate the adoption of shared bicycles as the fourth mode of transport,” he added.