Baicycle enters Lijiang bike-sharing market

Baicycle, a Xiaomi subsidiary, announced to put 5,000 intelligent public bikes to serve residents and tourists in Lijiang on April 19.

Baicycle will invest a total of 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) to enter Lijiang's bike-sharing market. There will be 415 bike-sharing stations being built around Lijiang's Ancient Town and Yulong county.

"Lijiang is Baicycle's second market to enter after Xiamen in Fujian province. The main reason we want to invest here is because of the huge amount of tourists visiting here every year, which have a large demand for short distance travel," said Cao Yuewen, co-founder of Baicycle.

The company aims to enter 30 second-tier cities across China in 2017, provide at least 5,000 bikes in each city and add additional bikes based on local demands. Baicycle has already signed cooperation agreements with eight city governments.

Li Bolin, general manager of Lijiang Urban Investment and Green Traffic Development Management Co, said that the each Baicycle has a GPS installed and staff members will tour around the city to find broken bikes and send them back to the warehouse for repairs.

Baicycle announced to put 5,000 intelligent public bikes in Lijiang on April 19. [Photo by He Yanlan/Xinhua]

Tourists ride Baicycle’s sharable bikes around Lijiang's Ancient Town. [Photo by He Yanlan/Xinhua]

Edited by Zachary Dye