Taiwan’s Foxconn invests in PE-backed Mobike

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Foxconn will become an exclusive manufacturing partner to Mobike, with a view to raising the company's total production capacity from the present level of 5.6 million units per year to more than 10 million.

The investment comes several weeks after Mobike received $215 million in Series D funding led by Tencent Holdings and Warburg Pincus. The same two investors also led Mobile’s Series C round – said to be worth more than $100 million – in October 2015, alongside Hillhouse Capital.

Under the new partnership, Foxconn will establish smart-bike production lines for Mobike intended to increase production and reduce costs. The two parties will also cooperate on initiatives to enhance the design and user experience of the bikes, leveraging Foxconn’s industrial design and R&D capabilities.

“As part of our business strategy, Foxconn is actively seeking to maximize the potential of internet-driven smart manufacturing. This partnership with Mobike is a great example of how we can use this expertise to address the challenges of urban transportation and deliver greater convenience to consumers,” James Du, a senior vice president at Foxconn, said in a statement.

Mobike was founded by former executives at Uber China and Ford Motor Company in January 2015. By the end of that year trial operations were underway in Shanghai and the service officially launched in the city in April 2016.

The company has since expanded the service to 13 cities around China, with more than 100,000 bikes in operation in each of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The bicycles were initially manufactured by the company in order to lower maintenance and repair costs.

Other investors in Mobike from earlier rounds include Qiming Venture Partners, Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Joy Capital, Panda Capital, Vertex Ventures China, and Sinovation Ventures.

Foxconn - best known as a key supplier to Apple and other consumer electronics brands - has previously made a number of high-profile tech investments in Asia, including ride-hailing platform Didi Chuxing and SoftBank's robotics business. It is also a backer of Best Logistics Technologies, a Chinese logistics operator that raised $760 million in September of last year.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Technology
• Expansion
• China
• TMT
• Venture
• Foxconn Technology Group
• Transportation