Recently, ofo users found that neither the Android version nor the Apple side can receive SMS verification codes, resulting in users unable to log in.
And some netizens used ofo mini program test also showed network abnormality, after seeing this problem, some users directly called ofo official customer service number, but the customer service phone has not been connected, the company's official website announced office phone prompt that it has been stopped.
Seeing this, many users feel that ofo is really going to be completely yellow, but ofo is yellow, and the user's deposit cannot be yellow.
ofo is like a storm, coming and going fast.
ofo is a bike-sharing company founded by Peking University talent David in 2014, which opened the dockless bicycle sharing model in China.
At the beginning, ofo shared bicycles quickly captured the recognition of a large number of users with some advantages such as flexibility and cheapness, and accumulated a large number of users in a short period of time.
By the end of 2016, the number of shared bicycle users reached about 18.86 million, and ofo's market share was as high as 51.2%, which is equivalent to the number of ofo users reaching about 9.65 million as of 2016.
After entering 2017, this can be said to be the first year of China's shared bicycles, this year shared bicycle users ushered in an outbreak, and the scale of the shared bicycle market directly soared to 50 million in 2017.
According to QuestMobile's latest "2017 Shared Bicycle Market Report", in May 2017, the monthly user size of ofo increased to 37.7 million, a month-on-month growth rate of more than 42%.
In addition, according to the data of the Analysys report, as of the end of June 2017, ofo's monthly active users increased to 40.735 million, and the user coverage rate was as high as 51.9%, which is worthy of sharing bicycles NO1.
Behind the surge in ofo users, everyone has also seen the vast "money scene", so many venture capital institutions have bet on ofo.
In March 2015, ofo received millions of yuan in angel round financing; In 2016, it experienced Pre-A round, A round, A+ round, B round, B+ round, and C round, with a cumulative annual financing amount of more than 150 million US dollars.
In 2017, when ofo was concentrated, its financing was even crazier, and in 2017 they experienced three rounds of financing, namely Series D of $450 million, Series D + of $100 million and above, and Series E of $700 million, with a cumulative financing amount of more than US$1.2 billion a year.
After obtaining huge financing, ofo also quickly began to expand the pace, not only in China to put a large number of bicycles, but also into some international markets in Europe and the United States.
At its peak, Ofo launched 23 million shared bicycles in China, with daily orders of more than 32 million and a valuation of tens of billions of yuan.
But behind the rapid development of ofo, there are actually many hidden crises, that is, there is no clear profit model, and it has been burning money.
From 2017 to 2018, the two years were the most competitive period in the mainland shared bicycle market, and at its peak, the number of domestic shared bicycle companies reached hundreds, and everyone wanted to get a piece of this emerging market.
In the face of extremely fierce competition in the market, ofo can only continue to maintain its market share by laying shared bicycles and lowering prices.
But this kind of blind expansion without earnings is actually very dangerous, once some capital leaves, ofo may collapse, and it turns out to be.
Since 2018, ofo began to have a crisis, after parting ways with Didi, ofo faced huge capital chain pressure, the book funds are only about 350 million, in the face of this dilemma, many users are afraid of ofo falling, so they have chosen to return the deposit, which further aggravates the financial tension of ofo.
Although they ushered in two rounds of financing in 2018, they received a strategic investment of 1.77 billion yuan in March 2018 and a strategic financing of 866 million US dollars on March 14, 2018, which temporarily eased the pressure on ofo's funds.
However, in 2018, ofo still continued to burn money, and competitors continued to burn money to compete for the market, so ofo still has not solved the crisis.
After obtaining a huge amount of financing, it burned almost in a few months, and in August 2018, ofo was sued by the other party to collect debts because it owed 68.151 million yuan to the supplier Shanghai Phoenix.
The development of shared bicycles to this stage, in fact, many people have already realized the crisis, so some venture capital institutions choose to shoot at a high level; Some even directly sold the shared bicycle companies they founded, such as Hu Weiwei, who sold Mobike and cashed out more than a billion yuan and successfully left the market.
Ofo's Dai Wei is unwilling to give up control of ofo, and has always wanted to fulfill his dream of being a great enterprise in the world, and finally after some capital left the market, ofo chickens flew and fell into failure, and even the user's deposit could not be refunded.
From 2015 to 2018, ofo developed quickly, but in just one year it fell from peak to trough, which came like a storm, but passed quickly.
Ofo still has 15 million user deposits that have not been refunded.
In the case of ofo's continuous losses, the majority of users are also full of various worries about them, so they began to ask for deposit refunds, but since around December 2018, ofo has begun to have difficulties in returning deposits.
In December 2018, some users went directly to ofo's office to ask for a deposit, and the queue for the deposit was nearly three hours.
In the face of the majority of users' deposit refund applications, ofo can be said to be worse, because according to the number of ofo users, a large number of users to return the deposit in the short term is very stressful for them, and the cash in their account is simply not enough to pay the deposit of all users.
So ofo can only come out with a policy, that is, users apply for a deposit refund, they must first come and come, and everyone has to queue slowly, but this row is more than 4 years.
For four years, at least 15 million users have been waiting for the deposit to be returned, but ofo still has no effective solution and can only delay it again and again.
The reason why Ofo can't refund the deposit is because they have run out of food and have a huge debt.
As for how much debt ofo owes at present, we can't see specific data, but taking into account user deposits and supplier payments, it must owe billions of dollars, so they have long been negative assets, even if they are sued by users to the court, they are unable to repay.
If some large investment institutions do not take over this mess, the huge debt owed by ofo is estimated to be impossible to repay in the short term, and some people even doubt that the deposit of 15 million users can be refunded in his lifetime.
ofo is yellow, but the user's deposit must not be yellow.
After ofo fell into the difficulty of returning the deposit, the majority of users have been waiting for them to return the deposit, although ofo has ceased to operate as a whole in the past few years, but they still have some personnel left behind to cope with the user's deposit problem, which at least makes the majority of users have some disappointment.
But now as the ofo APP stops logging in, the official customer service phone cannot be connected, which means that ofo is likely to stop operating at any time, and may even go bankrupt.
If ofo finally chooses bankruptcy liquidation, according to the current state of their assets, bankruptcy is just a formality, they already have no assets to auction, so even if they go bankrupt, they cannot return the deposit of the majority of users, even if they can be refunded, it is estimated that it will not be too much, and the average person can refund a few dollars is already very good.
But regardless of whether ofo ultimately chooses to go bankrupt, I think its founder Dai Wei should bear joint and several liability, and should continue to fulfill the repayment responsibility for the huge deposits owed by ofo.
After all, when ofo used the user deposit, it was a violation in itself, and the user deposit was not their own funds, but in the process of operation, they privately took the user's funds to do other things, which itself violated the law, so it was concluded that ofo went bankrupt I think the majority of users should also ask Dai Wei to bear joint and several liability.