In 2014, twenty-something-year-old Peking University PhD candidate Dai Wei and a handful of his fellow students decided to translate an experiment into a practical intervention. That intervention was to become a multibillion-dollar business.
Wei decided to capitalise on a need that he and his former colleagues were experiencing. Students walked long distances between lecture rooms and residences. Even those who had enough money to own bicycles preferred not to because they kept getting stolen.
Wei developed the idea of shared bike rides based on the Uber model. Instead of bicycles being locked at designated docking stations, an app would allow you to track free rides and unlock them with your device.