Original title: ofo refuses to buy didi: Dewey calls for fighting to the end
According to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, Dai Wei, chief executive of bike sharing platform ofo, rejected didi travel's potential bid at an internal meeting on Monday and called on the company's employees to fight to the end.
Recently, there has been a wave of integration in China's bike sharing market. Mobai, the market leader, has been acquired by meituan Dianping, a one-stop life service platform in China, and ofo has become the last major independent operator in this field.
The report said that ofo held an internal meeting on Monday, and its founder and chief executive, Mr. Davidson, compared the current state of the company with the difficulties faced by Britain during World War II described in the movie "darkest hour" and said he would stick to it.
According to people familiar with the situation, ofo's so-called 'dark hour' seems to refer to the acquisition negotiation with didi travel, a Chinese taxi service company. According to one of the sources, two weeks ago, Dawei had a communication with the CEO of didi travel, Cheng Wei, about a potential takeover offer, but Dawei made it clear that Cheng Wei would never give up.
Both ofo and didi declined to comment.
Dewey told employees attending Monday's meeting that if they don't want to fight to the end, they can choose to leave the company now. In the future, he said, the company will remain independent, and the five founders of ofo will retain a seat on the nine member board.
Like its rival Moby, ofo's business has been in a state of loss, which means that the company needs continuous blood transfusion to maintain its operation. In addition, the pressure on the whole bike sharing field is increasing day by day. Dozens of cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, have banned bike sharing enterprises from continuing to launch new bikes.
In an internal meeting, Dewey told employees that although the current days are very difficult, this is far from the most 'dark moment' in his life - his most severe test is how to deal with the challenges of bike sharing business in the early days of the company. It is reported that ofo was founded in 2015 and currently has more than 2000 employees with a valuation of about $3 billion.
At Monday's internal meeting, Dewey also launched a plan called 'victory', which aims to make ofo's profit reach 1 yuan, according to people familiar with the matter. The plan borrows Churchill's signature gesture "V", meaning victory.
It is a common problem for Chinese science and technology start-ups whether they can remain independent in the technology industry dominated by giants.
According to a report released by information service provider it orange in February, 50.8% of all 124 Unicorn enterprises in China are controlled or supported by Baidu, Alibaba group and Tencent. (Han)