China’s startup ecosystem starts showing some cracks

Nowadays, startup news covers many trends in the market, including the hot new topic: electric scooters. Through startups like Lime and Bird, cities were filled with the electric scooters that seemingly came out of nowhere, and transported people for a low price to places nearby. However, in 2017, China saw a similar phenomenon take the country by storm: bike sharing.

Similar to the electric scooters, people could rent the bikes for a certain period of time, and then drop the bike off at a different location, only to be charged for the time that they actually rented the bike. However, due to the oversupply of bikes and bike-sharing companies, 2018 saw the death of many of these startups, eventually leading to so-called ‘bike graveyards’ where the bikes found their final place.

However, according to Crunchbase, the bike-sharing startups are not the only ones that are facing a tough time in China – there is evidence of the entire Chinese startup ecosystem slowing down. In its recent Crunchbase News report on the Chinese startup venture capital market, Crunchbase showed a slowdown in the second half of last year, with the fourth quarter posting the country’s lowest reported venture dollar figure in 2018. Learn more about the Chinese startup ecosystem here.