Singapore’s SG Bike to cease operations, move users to Anywheel

Photo credit: SG Bike

Singapore bike-sharing company SG Bike will cease operations on April 30 after it has decided not to renew its operating license, citing a “strategic shift in business direction.” As of today, the company has stopped registering new users and accepting credit top-ups.

It also announced an arrangement with rival Anywheel where SG Bike users may convert their existing credits for use in the Anywheel app.

This marks the end of a seven-year journey for SG Bike, a homegrown bike-sharing firm founded at a time when players – mainly from China – flocked to Singapore to try and imitate a boom in that country.

By 2019, as the city-state implemented a tighter regulatory grip, competitors Ofo and oBike wound down their Singapore operations. Both SG Bike and Anywheel were able to fulfill the regulatory requirements, with SG Bike acquiring China-headquartered Mobike’s operations in the city-state that year.

However, despite surviving the Covid-19 pandemic, SG Bike had been loss-making between its 2020 and 2022 financial years. The company had accumulated losses of US$5.5 million in FY 2022, its most recent available financial information.

SG Bike’s closure leaves Singapore’s once-crowded bike-sharing sector down to two players: homegrown Anywheel and Alibaba-backed HelloRide. Anywheel is currently the larger player, with 30,000 bikes and 1.3 million users.

Meanwhile, HelloRide secured a license last year to operate 10,000 bikes.

See also: Anywheel defies odds to survive Singapore’s bike-sharing wars