This article is from the WeChat public Number: Tech Planet (ID: tech618) < span class = "text-remarks">, author: Ma micro Bing, Yang Jing Yi, the original title: “exclusive | ofo still recruit people, moved into shared office, half a million users deposit back,” drawing from the title : Oriental IC
Since ofo moved again in September, the new office has become the focus of attention.
Tech Planet is exclusively informed that ofo has moved to a shared office space in Jiuxianqiao, Chaoyang District after it moved away from the Haidian Zhongguancun Internet Finance Center in September. Since its establishment in 2014, ofo has moved five times before, this time it is already the sixth office of ofo.
ofo bikes in front of the new office
A user recently discovered that ofo’s unrefundable deposit may beTo return the deposit through shopping. Following the exchange of deposits for coins and deposits for P2P, Ofo, who has relocated five times, has been changing fancy repayment deposits and testing many businesses.
ofo moves into co-working space with an annual rent of about 5 million
From Zhongguancun to Jiuxianqiao, ofo moved into the sixth “home” since its establishment in 2014.
Since it was revealed that the deposit cannot be returned normally in 2018, there have been several reports of “ofo people going empty”. Tech Planet had an exclusive report of “ofo quietly moved away from Zhongguancun.” Ofo’s previous office location, the Beijing Internet Finance Center, had moved in September due to the expiration of the contract.
Ofo has moved five times so far, and the first five office locations are all within Zhongguancun. This time, ofo not only moved out of Zhongguancun, but even far away from Haidian, came to Chaoyang Jiuxian Bridge.
Tech Planet has learned from the recent job postings of ofo that Ofo’s operating entity Dongxia Datong (Beijing) Management Consulting Co., Ltd. An office building in Jiuxianqiao.
On November 28, Tech Planet came to the office to visit the office and found that the building has 19 floors, 12 to 19 floors were rented by a co-working company, and ofo rented the entire co-working space. Floor.
Tech Planet contacted the sales office of the shared office company for consultation. The other party said that “there are several floors that have been rented out by large customers”, but it is not convenient to disclose the specific name of the large customer company.
Subsequently, after checking the companies in each floor, Tech Planet confirmed the floor of ofo and asked an employee who went out from this floor: Is this the office location of Dongxia Chase? The employee first answered “yes” affirmatively, then evasively, and asked “do you have anything?”
This co-working space is equipped with an access control system in the elevator, tea room, and the entrance of the office. Tech Planet asked the cleaning staff if they can enter. The other party refused. . “
ofo entrance and exit of the current office
Ofo’s fifth move has not announced its whereabouts, and it has been very low-key since moving to Jiuxianqiao. Tech Planet’s field visit found that ofo’s floor, unlike other resident companies, posted a company logo or placed a sign describing the company’s business. From the door, the employees of ofo were sitting in the coffer office space. In the employee ’s entrance and exit door, the ofo logo is not printed on it. It is difficult to recognize from the outside that this is the office of ofo.
According to the salesperson of this co-working space, the first floor can accommodate 150 to 180 employees, which also means that ofo currently has less than 200 employees, and the 1,000 square meters of office space on the first floor can meet the needs of employees. Office needs.
The above salesperson introduced that the charge standard for each station in this co-working space is about 2500 ~ 2700 yuan / month. If calculated on the basis of 180 workstations per floor, ofo’s annual rent for the office space is about 5 million yuan.
Fancy deposits have almost disappeared, and the company is still hiring
According to information learned by Tech Planet in the new office of ofo, ofo’s headquarters currently has approximately 200 employees. In addition to the original bicycle sharing business, there are still many other businesses in development.
For users of ofo, the biggest concern is when their deposit can be refunded.
Since November 2018, ofo is in a financial crisis, some users find that the deposit cannot be refunded immediately, and a large number of users have begun to line up in front of the office building to refund the deposit.
Since then, ofo has also introduced a variety of ways to refund deposits. Recently, some users have discovered that ofo has launched a “return money every day” campaign on the homepage of its APP., Directly refund the deposit “and said that nearly 7 million yuan has been returned to the user.
However, after the user experience, I found that once participating in the activity, the deposit can only be withdrawn through the cashback method. If the amount of cash consumed does not reach the deposit limit, the remaining deposit will not be refunded. In addition, the number of cash withdrawals for different deposits is also different. If you want to get a full deposit of 99 yuan, you need to buy thousands of yuan of goods.
Ofo’s fancy refund of deposit once again intensified the user’s emotions. A user who has not refunded the deposit said that in April this year, he was ranked at 8,715,796 for refunds, and at 7,590,238 in late November. According to this calculation, within 7 months, 1,125,558 users have refunded the deposit.
Comparison of the number of refund deposits in late November and April this year
However, due to the different ways of OFO refunding the deposit, it has also previously cooperated with the mutual gold platform PPmoney to turn the deposit into a P2P asset, which was quickly removed from the shelves after the dispute was triggered. Later, deposits were changed to gold coins for consumption, but there were few types of goods and relatively high prices, and only a few users chose. Some users also said that their previous deposit was converted into a Didi taxi ticket.
Therefore, it is not possible to calculate the exact amount of the cash refund deposit for more than one million refunds in 7 months. As of now, Tech Planet has found that 16 million users are still waiting in line to return their deposits.
Ofo has been keeping a low profile since this year. The official WeChat “ofo small yellow car subscription number” has been suspended for updates since March 8 this year when it tweeted “only a 3.8% off monthly card”. Until November 1, a push English resource marketing article, but it is no longer viewable, showing “This content has been deleted by the publisher”. Ofo ’s official Weibo update also stayed in August this year, with a rumored statement of 5 yuan / cycle recycling.
Ofo’s founder, Dave, hasn’t appeared in public this year. According to the latest news from China Enforcement Information Network, two days ago, the court of Ningbo High-tech Industrial Development Zone issued a consumption restriction order against the main operating entities of Dongxia Chase and Dawei. To date, Dawei has a total of 34 consumption restrictions, which is two more than Jia Yueting who will return to China next week.
Ofof has almost disappeared, but Tech Planet has found that ofo is still recruiting staff.
According to the recently released recruitment information, we can see that ofo currently has nearly 20 positions recruited. The types of positions include public relations executives, investment managers, engineers, bicycle maintenance personnel, and mall operations, quality control, growth, Investment and other positions, working in Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing, Changzhou, Yinchuan and other places.
In addition, according to the person who went to the new office of ofo for an interview, HR said that there are currently many ofo’s business lines, and it is inconvenient to disclose. But from the current position of ofo recruiting, and this year ofo launched piled cars, actively trying new businesses such as smart electric vehicles, ofo may be planning a blueprint for revival.
“Already changed” bike sharing market
Ofo has been trying to return to the mainstream battlefield of bike sharing from the crisis until now. But times have changed, and today’s bike-sharing market is no longer the pattern of ofo when it was in the limelight.
Bicycle industry insiders revealed to Tech Planet that in June of this year, several large trucks with OFO bicycles were shipped directly to the incineration plant in Shanghai for incineration and recycling. According to another person close to the shared bike foundry, the major foundries no longer produce bikes of ofo and Mobike in 2017. With the purchase of Mobike by Meituan, these factories began to produce orders for “Meituanhuang” .
The era of sharing bicycle industry byofo and Mobike is over. The current bike-sharing market is dominated by Meituan, Qingju and Hello. The few ofo small yellow cars on the streets of Beijing are relatively old and have a worse riding experience than other vehicles.
In the Didi Chuxing App, the logos of ofo, Xiaolan, and Citrus will appear under the “Cycling” tab. Now in the main interface, you can only see Citrus ’ Cyan cycling sign. Relevant people of Didi responded to Tech Planet. The cooperation between Didi and ofo is still going on, and users can still use the Didi out-of-line scan code to ride the ofo small yellow car.
Change from the page of Didi APP, it is not difficult to find that Didi is deliberately vigorously promoting the Orange brand and diminishing the signs of ofo and Xiaolan. Ofo, which once refused to be acquired by Didi, is gradually being forgotten by the market. Ofo’s return to the mainstream must be difficult.
Didi APP scan code cycling page
Time back to 18 months ago, Didi CEO Cheng Wei and ofo CEO Dai WeiDidi acquired Ofo for negotiation. Ofo still had 2,000 employees and a $ 3 billion valuation, but Dawei rejected the acquisition plan in the negotiations and said in an internal meeting, “If anyone feels they don’t want to fight to the end You can choose to leave the company right away. “
By June 2019, Dawei, who was on the verge of bankruptcy, actively sought Cheng Wei for an acquisition, but was rejected by Cheng Wei.
As a former bike-sharing overlord, ofo was unwilling to leave the field, and Dawei didn’t want to end the curtain.
Since 2018, ofo has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs, from 6,000 employees at its peak to nearly 200 employees.
Testing water P2P, selling online and offline advertising, public account connection advertising, getting involved in the field of e-commerce, testing water scooters, laying open screen advertisements, and selling company assets. Ofo is trying to do everything possible to keep the company running and refund user deposit .
This article is from WeChat public account: Tech planet (ID: tech618) , author: Ma micro ice, Yang-yi