INTERVIEW: Smart bike-sharing company Mobike is focused on being a technology company not just a cycle-rental firm, with plans to dedicate resources to develop a global IoT platform and use customer data to improve internal processes as well as its consumer services.

An example of this is using customer data to dynamically dispatch bicycles to ensure the optimum density to allow users to locate bikes conveniently.

“Based on historical information, we’ll be able to know in which location and at what time there will be a surge in demand, so we can relocate bicycles to meet the requirements to better meet users’ needs,” Joe Xia, CTO and co-founder (pictured), told Mobile World Live.

Mobike also uses customer data to keep track of the condition of bicycles so it can identify broken bikes, and arrange collection and repair: “If you have many bicycles with issues on the street, it can cause serious customer service issues,” he said.

Xia said 2017 was a “crazy growth year for Mobike” in China but competition also intensified and the market had become increasingly saturated in just two years.

The company is expanding aggressively outside of China, with its most recent launches in Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. It rolled out its bike-sharing service in 20 cities in 13 countries in the last few months.

Xia said the company registered its fastest growth to-date in the “last quarter” and plans to “launch in a lot more markets outside of China in the next quarter.”

Click here to view the full interview.