Settings

ⓕ font-size

  • -2
  • -1
  • 0
  • +1
  • +2

Bike-share startup seeks to improve urban mobility

  • Facebook share button
  • Twitter share button
  • Kakao share button
  • Mail share button
  • Link share button
Mass Asia co-CEO Joshua Han, right, and Sarah Jung / Courtesy of Maas Asia
Mass Asia co-CEO Joshua Han, right, and Sarah Jung / Courtesy of Maas Asia

By Baek Byung-yeul

The sharing economy is an emerging economy model based on products or services being shared by consumers, and bike-sharing is one a fast growing sector in the category in many countries.

In Korea, more people are increasingly using bike-sharing after local governments launched the service for residents. When it comes to the private sector, however, there aren't many providing bike-share services.

Joshua Han and Sarah Jung, co-CEOs of Maas Asia discovered the business opportunity of bike-share services when they visited China a few years ago.

"I was investigating various services based on the sharing economy model in China and saw many people there using bike-sharing systems. In Korea, taxis make their most money from short distance fares of less than three kilometers," Jung said during an interview in Seoul, Oct. 1.

After completing their market research, Jung and Han decided to launch a private bike-sharing service in March, last year, and launched S-Bike in November.

To test the market feasibility of their service, the co-CEOs chose Yeouido, one of Seoul's financial hubs, as their test bed.

"We chose Yeouido as our bike-sharing system's test bed. We found data from the Korea Transport Institute that taxis are most widely used there during morning commute times," Jung said. "The buildings in Yeouido are pretty far away from subway and bus stations so many people use taxis for short-distances."

To get more people to use the service, Maas Asia also signed an agreement to share about 140,000 bike parking lots in Seoul with the Seoul Metropolitan Government before launching the trial service.

When they launched the service, they placed 400 bikes on Yeouido. It has been almost a year since the beginning of the trial service and the result was successful, they said.

"Some 12,000 people are registered to S-Bike, 77 percent of whom are men. Their average distance traveled was about 1 kilometer and 90 percent of S-Bike users rode the bikes for less than 30 minutes. So it proved that S-Bike is a suitable service for short distances," Jung said.

For riders who want to use the S-Bike service, they need to download the S-Bike app through App stores. Once they make a deposit of 25,000 won ($22), they can use the bike-sharing service.

Han said the firm plans to launch electric bikes and kickboards on the market next year.

"I think we can distinguish ourselves by launching electric bikes. With the electric bikes, we expect more people will use S-Bike not only for short-distance transportation purposes but also longer distances," Han said adding the firm is aiming to officially launch its service in Seoul and other cities here next March.


Baek Byung-yeul baekby@koreatimes.co.kr


X
CLOSE

Top 10 Stories

go top LETTER