Bluegogo 小蓝单车: the bike-share #3 that burned ¥400M and left suppliers unpaid

Bluegogo 小蓝单车 was the third big name in China's bike-share race of 2017: it completed a 400-million-yuan A round in January 2017 (announced 24 February, led by 黑洞资本), hit 6.25 million registered users and 355,000 bikes by March, and claimed more than 20 million users by November — while the market leaders, ofo and Mobike, each had over ten million bikes on the street and together held about 95% of the category.

The winter came in November 2017. On the 14th most staff were dismissed; on the 15th the office was reported empty; on the 16th founder Li Gang's open letter handed operations to an agent, 拜客出行. Suppliers were owed about 200 million yuan across more than 70 companies, wages were postponed to February 2018, and the deposit — raised from 99 to 199 yuan in July — was stuck.

The salvage was partial. In January 2018 Didi took over operations under a custody agreement, relaunched the bikes on its platform and let deposits be converted into Didi vouchers — but the company itself never recovered, and the episode became the symbol of how a funded #3 could die when the category's capital tapped out.