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Despite verbalising a desire to enter Singapore, MoBike has been beaten to the city-state by a local player and a fierce competitor

Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Temasek, and previous investor Hillhouse Capital made a stragetic investment in China’s bike-sharing leader MoBike, the startup announced today.

While the financial details of the deal were not disclosed, MoBike has raised over US$300 million since the start of 2017.

Hillhouse Capital led MoBike’s Series C round in late-2016 while a Temasek-subsidiary (Vertex Ventures) led the company’s Series B+ earlier that year.

This amount of money — and the speed at which the company is fundraising — is remarkable for a startup that has been on the roads for less than a year (the bike-sharing programme was officially operational in Shanghai in April 2016).

“In just 10 months, Mobike has grown to serving more than 10 million users across 21 cities -and in that time, people across China have taken more than 200 million Mobike rides. This equates to a reduction in carbon emissions of hundreds of thousands of tonnes,” said company Co-founder and CEO Davis Wang in a statement.

Also Read: In Pics: Bike-sharing quietly starts rolling in Singapore

Wang said the money will be used to enhance technology, increasing production, hire people and expand abroad.

For example, on increasing production, MoBike wants to build 10 million of its smart bikes and has partnered with Foxconn to help accomplish this goal.

Entering Singapore, where ofo and oBike are waiting

MoBike also said it wants to enter Singapore in 2017, but it will not enjoy first-mover status in the city.

In early February, e27 reported on the quiet launch of a local bike-sharing company called oBike. Just today, MoBike’s chief rival in China, ofo, launched in Singapore, according to The Straits Times.

Zhang Lei, the Founder of Hillhouse Capital, pointed to the probable international expansion as a reason his firm invested in MoBike.

“In particular, we believe that Mobike has huge potential for growth internationally, and we look forward to leveraging our global network and resources to help Mobike bring its innovative urban transportation solution to cities around the world,” he said.

Also Read: More than a bubble: A breakdown in the sudden boom of bike-sharing in China

MoBike claims to have 5.8 million active users, which it says is four-times the amount of its competition (the company cited a third-party report from iResearch to source the numbers).

MoBike operates in 21 cities in China.

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