Earlier in April, Land Transport Authority (LTA) graduated Anywheel Pte Ltd from a sandbox license.
Along with another local company Moov Technology, LTA granted “in-principle approval” for licenses to operate dockless bicycle-sharing services in public places.
After Anywheel was awarded the full license — which allowed it to operate 10,000 bicycles — founder and CEO Htay Aung ordered new bicycles to scale up its fleet.
It currently operates less than 1,000 bicycles, but aims to grow its fleet to 10 times its current size.
By end of this year, Anywheel’s fleet will grow up to 10,000 bicycles. This could bring the total number of shared bicycles in Singapore to 13,000.
The remaining 3,000 bicycles belong to SG Bike, the only other existing bike-sharing player in Singapore following the exit of Mobike, oBike, and ofo (its license has been suspended by LTA).
Expanding To CBD Next Month
While most of Anywheel’s bicycles are located in Punggol, Mr Htay Aung shared that they intend to expand “area by area” and eventually grow its footprint islandwide.
In July, Anywheel will be deploying 2,000 to 3,000 bicycles in the Central Business District (CBD).
Its new bicycles will be equipped with a high-tech lock that is designed in-house. This lock helps Anywheel’s operations team to locate bicycles and manage the fleet.
Unlike the previous batch of locks, which are used by many operators, their lock has a much more “stable battery life”, allowing them to “generate as much location data feedback as [they] want.”
With a more accurate location tracking, Anywheel can prevent indiscriminate parking of bicycles, which has been the biggest concern surrounding shared bicycles.
One Man’s Loss Is Another Man’s Treasure
When ride-hailing firm Uber exited the Singapore market back in March last year, Grab dominated the market with the acquisition of Uber’s operations in Southeast Asia.
Following its departure, a surge of ride-hailing service providers have emerged in Singapore in a bid to ‘grab’ a slice of the market share.
Likewise, the exit of rival firms Mobike, oBike and ofo meant that there is a huge gap for Anywheel to fill.
True enough, many shared bikes users in Singapore have flocked to Anywheel.
According to Mr Htay Aung, they have received a lot of emails and requests for Anywheel to deploy in the areas where those companies used to occupy.
Every time those companies went down, our downloads surged significantly.
Anywheel founder and CEO, Mr Htay Aung, CNA interview
That said, Anywheel is confident that there is still a demand for shared bicycles in Singapore.
For now, Anywheel is focused on handling the 10,000 bicycles under its current license but intends to further expand its fleet to 30,000 during the next round of licensing.
Anywheel also hopes to expand regionally, bringing its shared bikes and e-scooter offering JustScoot to Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia and Australia in August.
On its Facebook page, Anywheel said that it is looking into “expanding into PMD sharing” in Singapore following the grant of its license.
Featured Image Credit: Anywheel
