oBike flooded Singapore with bikes, then quit overnight when licensing arrived

oBike launched dockless bike-sharing in Singapore in January 2017, months after the company was founded in Hong Kong. Riders unlocked bikes with an app, parked them wherever they liked, and paid a refundable deposit — S$49, or S$19 for students. Growth was explosive: 14,000 bikes on Singapore's streets, expansion into Malaysia, Australia and Europe, and a US$45 million Series B round in August 2017.

The model ran on deposits and venture money, not revenue. oBike's 2017 accounts showed revenue of S$912,000 against a S$4.25 million loss, assets of S$11.3 million and liabilities of S$22.7 million. The bikes themselves became the complaint: they were abandoned in drains and rivers — Melbourne's Yarra River had to be dredged — and chained to public railings across Singapore.

The end came in a single day. When Singapore's Land Transport Authority introduced a licensing regime requiring dockless bike-sharing operators to register by 7 July 2018, oBike announced on 25 June that it would cease operations immediately. It cited difficulty meeting the new rules; the decision was the company's own, made by its board — not an order to close.

Users opened the app to find the refund button gone. oBike initially said it owed S$6.3 million in deposits; liquidator FTI later put the figure at S$8.91 million across more than 220,000 holders, of whom only S$439,878 in claims were filed. Around 35,000 abandoned bikes were removed from public spaces, and S$10 million of the S$11.7 million collected in Singapore had already been transferred to Hong Kong.