Bicycle sharing service oBike wasn’t the first to penetrate our market, but it’s definitely one that has been consistently evolving since its debut last Feb. Just a couple weeks back, they announced that that they’ll be launching their own cryptocurrency called oCoins. And now, they’ve just pushed out a new delivery service called oBike Flash.
Unfortunately, it’s not that kind of delivery service where you can order food from your favorite restaurants and hawkers stalls or groceries from the supermarket to be sent to your place; you can stick to the usual suspects for that. Instead, oBike Flash is more of a courier service where you can get stuff—anything ranging from documents and small packages to food and clothes; as long as it’s 10kg or less—delivered between two points under two hours. Each delivery will cost $10 if it’s within a five-kilometer radius, and an additional 30 cents per kilometer thereafter (up to 10km). However, if you’re making a delivery between 11pm-7am, you’ll have to fork out 50 cents per kilometer instead if it’s between 10-20km.
We’re not too sure how oBike Flash is going to fare in our market, especially when there are so many other courier services like local start-up GoGoVan and industry giants Speedpost; which means that they really need to stand out to win consumers over. Nonetheless, we applaud this new expansion, especially when competitors like Ofo and Mobike have other things, like ride hailing, in their pipeline. We’re also pretty confident that we’ll start seeing massive complaints about the service once people start trying it out, especially since its main business is still bicycle sharing.
