After bike-sharing, this looks like China’s next startup craze

Because how will you text people during dinner if your phone dies? Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

China’s red-hot bike-sharing industry is drawing hundreds of millions of dollars out of investor coffers. Now, a new kind of “sharing” business seems to be following suit: portable phone charger sharing.

The idea is simple: rent out battery packs at places like restaurants, hotels, and karaoke bars and charge people by the hour. And because this is China, payments and rentals happen via QR code. The whole premise rests on the idea that people are so smartphone-obsessed, a full charge isn’t enough to last the whole day.

It’s part of a growing trend in the country where anything can be rented as long as it has a QR code. Like umbrellas:

Umbrellas for rent in the subway. Photo credit: Molisan.

Or basketballs, like at this high school:

Only 22 cents per half hour! Photo credit: Zhunzhe Lanqiu ‘Bootcamp’ WeChat account.

And there are now several startups renting out battery packs.

Photo credit: Ankerbox.

Full power

Today, one such phone charger startup, Xiaodian, announced a US$50 million series B round led by Sequoia China Capital and Banyan Capital, with Tencent as a participating investor. The Beijing-based startup got US$14.5 million series A in April.

Not bad for a startup that charges cellphones for less than US$1 an hour.