The Hello IPO will be in the United States in Q2. It is expected to raise around US$2 billion.
Photo from CFP
By KE Xiaobin
Hello Inc., a late bloomer in the Chinese bike-sharing business, is finally going public and does not consider itself a business on two wheels anymore.
Internal sources told Jiemian News that the Hello IPO will be in the United States in Q2. The share issue is expected to raise around US$2 billion (13 billion yuan).
Known in China as “Hellobike,” the company stretches far beyond bike-sharing. Since 2018, Hello has dabbled in ride-hailing, NEVs, and local lifestyle services.
Blue and white Hellobikes first appeared on the streets in Ningbo, a harbor city in Zhejiang Province, in 2016. It was a time of great hops for shared bikes. Ofo had a valuation of US$200 million, while archenemy Mobike followed closely behind at US$150 million.
Hello had almost no money at all, and what it did mostly came from an entrepreneurship grant to founder YANG Lei.
“It would have been suicide to challenge Ofo or Mobike in Beijing or Shanghai,” said Yang. Hello, quit Shanghai and started sharing bikes in small cities that the giants had overlooked.
In 2017 Ant Group wanted to promote the new bike-sharing feature of Alipay, and asked Hello to put their QR code on the bikes. When Hello raised US$350 million in December that year, Ant Group was among the investors.
With help from Ant Group, Hello started expansion in 2018. In the same year, Meituan bear-hugged Mobike with US$2.7 billion, and Ofo drowned in a financial crisis. In retrospect, bike-sharing was never a great business model, but it gave Hello a start, and soon Hello was the dominant player in the bike park. More than 400 million people now use the app each day in over 400 cities.
None of the bike-sharing firms backed by e-commerce operations ever managed to turn a profit. Hello started to sell scooters, moving firmly into Meituan and Didi territory. A joint venture with Ant Group and CATL came up with a battery swap service for EVs, many of which are ride-hailing cars from Didi and Meituan. Hello’s own hitch and ride-hailing services are built on the foundation of its two-wheeled business.
Hello’s latest move against Meituan is in community shopping. It has quietly recruited shoppers in Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong and is now marching towards Guangzhou, the capital. Hello shoppers get commissions from sharing shopping links and for introducing people to the Hello platform.
Though backed by Alibaba, Hello can’t match Didi or Meituan in terms of financial muscle. It seems reasonable to go public now if only to provide more money.
“When listed, Hello will be known as an O2O platform providing all kinds of services to everyone,” Hello said.
