Mingbike became the first bike-share to go bankrupt — 118,738 riders' deposits gone

Mingbike launched in Shanghai in September 2016, founded by Jin Chaohui, a co-founder of the student-services startup Zhaimi, with a team drawn from Didi and Uber. Within its first month it completed three funding rounds, capped by a RMB 100 million A round in October 2016 led by Deng Yonghao, chairman of the bicycle brand Kailushi, who then took over the company's operations.

The model leaned on rider deposits. Every user paid a RMB 199 deposit, and by the time the company collapsed it had taken in more than RMB 800 million from roughly four million users while deploying over 430,000 bikes. In July 2017 refunds began to stall, and by December the Guangzhou consumer commission filed a public-interest lawsuit — the first ever against a bike-share company.

On 23 November 2017 its controlling shareholder Deng Yonghao went missing, 99% of staff were laid off, and salaries went unpaid. On 27 March 2018 the Guangzhou Intermediate Court accepted a bankruptcy-liquidation filing, making Mingbike the first bike-share brand in China to enter bankruptcy.

The liquidation revealed the scale of the hole. Some 118,738 rider claims plus supplier and staff claims were registered, while the administrator recovered only about RMB 350,000. In July 2018 the remaining bikes were sold for RMB 12 each. Four million deposited riders were left holding claims against a company that had spent their money.