A source from the company’s Malaysian branch told FMT that only oBike Singapore had stopped operations as the new requirements from the Land Transport Authority (LTA) in Singapore were reportedly not favourable to the business.
However, he did not elaborate on what those requirements were.
“It’s only happening in Singapore. We are still running in other countries right now,” the source said.
He did not say for how long Singapore would cease operations.
The oBike bicycle-sharing system originated from Singapore. The bikes have a built-in Bluetooth lock and can therefore be left anywhere at the end of a journey, not just at a docking station.
Recently, Singapore-based portal The Business Times reported that oBike had made a loss of more than S$4 million (RM11 million) last year, and owes unpaid fees to various service providers, including an unnamed logistics firm and a public relations agency, Ruder Finn.
oBike Malaysia started operations in Selangor in April, 2017.
oBike’s aim is to cover the “first and last mile” of a person’s journey. The introduction of the MRT and extensions of LRT routes have created a real need for bicycles.
“There are ride-sharing services which use cars. But for many of our users, the distance to their nearest public transport is too far to walk and too near to drive, so using a bicycle makes perfect sense,” Ian Goh, oBike Malaysia’s business development manager, had told FMT last year.
Users only need to download the oBike app and pay a one-time refundable deposit. Users are charged for the time the bicycles are used.