| Hu Weiwei | |
| Native Name: | 胡玮炜 |
| Birth Place: | Dongyang |
| Nationality: | Chinese |
| Alma Mater: | Zhejiang City College |
| Occupation: | Journalist Businesswoman |
| Known For: | CEO of Mobike (2016–2018) |
Hu Weiwei (born 1982) is a Chinese journalist and businesswoman. She is a co-founder of bicycle-sharing company Mobike.
She is also a great inventor. She invented smart dockless (station-free) shared bikes. She founded the bicycle-sharing company Mobike. Mobike provides station-free bikes in cities, which allows citizens to ride the bike to the places without public transportation. Users can unlock a bike by scanning a QR-code on the bike. Her invention solves the “last one kilometer” problem.[1] In major cities of China, although the complex subway system can transport passengers to most places of the city, passengers still need to walk for a few hundred meters or more to reach their jobs or home. Hu’s invention helped citizens to solve this problem at a relatively low cost.
Mobike started its operation in 2016 and grew very fast. In June 2017, Mobike was valued at US$3 billion. Until 2018, Mobike operated in more than 200 cities and 19 countries around the world.
Hu Weiwei was born in Dongyang, Zhejiang province, China. She attended the City College of Zhejiang University. during 2000–2004.[2] Her major is communication. After graduation, she became a journalist focused on business, economics, technology, and automobiles. She has been hired by Daily Economics News (每经网), a Chinese business newspaper, mainly covers the tech news for automobile industry. She also worked for The Beijing News (新京报), which is a stated-owned newspaper.[2] She born a son in 2010. In 2015, she realized that she needs to do something innovative, both benefiting society and building her family with a better financial status. In the meanwhile, she already has more than 10 years’ experience of working with automobile and transportation industry. As a result, she founded Mobike in 2015, a bike sharing company operating smart dockless (station-less) shared bikes.
In 2014 Hu founded the media platform GeekCar.[3] Through her contacts in the automobile and technology sector, Hu assembled a team in late 2015 to start a bicycle-sharing company and launched Mobike in January 2016.[4] Co-founder Wang Xiaofeng, the general manager for the Shanghai office of Uber also known by his English name Davis Wang, became Mobike's CEO. Unable to purchase bikes from suppliers to the preferred specifications, the company built its own bikes which rolled out from April 2016.
Early in 2017, Hu was one of seven leaders, scholars and entrepreneurs to present to Premier of China Li Keqiang and other political leaders to provide ideas for the annual Government Report.[5]
In early April 2018, it was announced that Mobike had been acquired by Chinese web company Meituan-Dianping for US$2.7 billion,.[6] Wang was reportedly opposed to the takeover and left Mobike at the end of that month, with Hu taking on the role of CEO.[7] Hu left Mobike in December 2018 "for personal reasons".[8] Hu is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.[9]
She is known as one of the inventors of dockless bike sharing system. Dai Wei, the cofounder of “Ofo” is also an inventor of dockless bike sharing system. Dai Wei and Hu Weiwei started to develop this system simultaneously, and his company “Ofo” entered the market even a few months prior to Hu Weiwei’s company “Mobike”. However, Mobike the first smart dockless bike sharing system in the world, the first generation Mobikes were far more intelligent than Ofo’s first generation bikes. The reason why Mobike is “smart” it that it has an advanced unlocking process and GPS function. Every mobike has a smart intelligent lock. When a user scans a QR code on the Mobike, the company database authorizes the bike's unique electronic key to the user's phone, which unlocks the bike via Bluetooth. Users then use the app to pay the trip. Along with the fast development of online payment (paying through QR code) in China, people nowadays prefer to pay the trip within mobike’s app.[10] In-app payment makes the transaction very convenient. Compared to the unlocking process of Ofo’s bike, users are provided with a fixed code for a mechanical combination lock after scanning a QR code on the bike. Mobike’s approach avoids the risks of free-rider problems. Traditional mechanical lock has an issue which is when a user forgets to spin the dial of the lock to a random position, the next rider may open the lock easily without scanning the QR code and not paying for the trip. The second innovation of Mobike bike sharing system is the importation GPS function to bikes. Since mobikes are dockless, they can be put in many hidden corners of the cities. GPS function allows users to find nearby bikes in the app.
In 2018, Hu Weiwei resigned as chief executive for “personal issue”.[11] In order to get more capital and keep competitive in bike-sharing industry. Hu Weiwei and her team sold Mobike for US$2.7 billion to Meituan-Dianping (a large Chinese shopping platform) in April 2018. No information indicated how much Hu earned in this transaction, but Hu agreed to stay in the company. She wrote a letter to the employees of Mobike. She wrote that she has completed her mission, and she hopes Mobike has a bright future.
The development of dockless bikes is also facing some controversy. Since mobikes are dockless, users can end a trip at any places they want. Mobike receives many complaints related to street clutter. In September 2018, Mobike was pulled out from Manchester (UK), one of the reasons is overuse of public space.[12] To address this problem. Mobike and some of its competitors have started to use electric fence technology to make sure users put bikes in places suitable for parking.[13] Users can browse parking spots around their destination in the app, and they can only end a trip and stop being billed when the GPS chip of the bike has detected the bike is in a correct parking area.
The American business magazine Forbes listed Hu and her business partner Xia Yiping as number twenty on its 2017 "40 under 40" list.[14]
Mobike Awarded with UN’s Top Environmental Prize – 2017 Champion of the Earth.[15]
In 2018, Hu Weiwei made the Forbes Asia Emergent Women 25 List.[16]
Mobike won iF Design Award for 4 projects.[17]
Mobike won Red Dot Design Award for its "New Lite" and "Mobike E-bike".[18] [19]