Keeping the momentum: how Anywheel won the bike-sharing war in Singapore

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Hello,

Recently, I went shopping with someone for a mutual friend’s wedding. We stumbled upon a bike shop, which brought back memories of biking to school. We loved cycling!

We almost bought bikes right then before we realized: “Where are we going to use them?”

We couldn’t think of a single place where we could go by cycling without worrying about someone stealing them. It’s hard enough to find safe parking spaces for cars and motorcycles in most Indian cities, let alone bikes.

The problem of theft – along with other major issues – led Ofo, one of the bike-sharing platforms in India, to exit the country, which caused major layoffs.

But in Singapore, Anywheel, which started during the same time as Ofo but on a much smaller scale, has not only survived but thrived.

In this week’s first Big Story, my colleague Putra writes about how Anywheel has become the city’s largest bike-sharing platform.

In our second Big Story, my colleague Emmanuel writes about another small player who has made it big. Jason Chin, a solo entrepreneur based out of Singapore, is halfway to earning US$1 million just by selling Notion templates.

And for this week’s AI Odyssey, I write about OpenAI’s latest text-to-video offering – Sora – and the potential concerns around it.

— Lokesh

THE BIG STORIES

1️⃣Anywheel defies odds to survive Singapore’s bike-sharing wars

Image credit: Made by Tech in Asia using Midjourney

Anywheel was around as a relatively small player during bike-sharing’s heyday in Singapore. Now, it’s still standing – despite a lack of VC funds.

FYI

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