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.

oBike quit overnight, deleting refunds and leaving S$8.91M unpaid across 220,000+ users, because S$10M of S$11.7M collected had already moved to Hong Kong.

The model depended on user deposits and venture funding — 2017 revenue of S$912,000 against liabilities of S$22.7 million.

Growth meant parking bikes anywhere, precisely what the new licensing regime set out to stop, leaving a choice between compliance and exit.

The board chose a same-day exit over adapting, deleting the refund button and turning deposits into an insolvency matter.

Deposits were spent as working capital: S$10 million of S$11.7 million collected in Singapore had been moved to Hong Kong before the collapse.

A business funded by user deposits is a loan from the people who lose first. oBike quit overnight because the refunds were already spent; licensing merely revealed the model was never solvent.

oBike's collapse became the template for dockless bike-sharing failures in Southeast Asia. Liquidator FTI found S$8.91 million owed to more than 220,000 deposit holders, but only S$439,878 was claimed, and most users never recovered their money. More than 35,000 abandoned oBikes were cleared from public spaces over the following year. The brand survived in other markets for a while, but the Singapore shutdown is remembered as the moment the free-parking era of dockless bikes ended.