SYDNEY, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China's bike-share company Ofo has launched operation in Sydney on Thursday.
Already in 180 cities across 17 countries, the pedal-powered Chinese giant generates over 32 million transactions every day with its 10 million bikes.
The company's chief operating officer Zhang Yanqi said Ofo was "thrilled" to bring its service to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time.
"We are dedicated to making Australian cities as green and liveable as possible by providing the ultimate healthy and low-carbon mobility solution," he said.
Ofo have deployed 200 bikes in central Sydney with a plan to launch 200 more across the inner west and eastern suburbs in coming months.
Although the phenomenon of bike-sharing has been widely popular for a some years across China and a number of other countries, it's only recently began to take off down under.
This year oBike and Reddy Go launched their own operations in Australia with brazen success.
Roland Tam, the co-founder of Australia's only share-economy start up accelerator, the Sharing Hub, told Xinhua that Aussie's are beginning to embrace the share-economy more and more.
In fact, according to a report by Deloitte Access Economics, the share-economy grew 1 billion Australian dollars (771 million U.S. dollars) during the financial year to 2016 at 68 percent in the state of New South Wales alone.
"The share-economy works because it solves a problem and there is a clear demand for it, because typically it's utilising assets more efficiently," Tam said.
"As people start to understand how it works, the sector grows significantly."
Tam and his business partner Mike Rosenbaum, founded the Sharing Hub along with three other share-economy startups in order to spawn growth in the industry across Australia.
Although the sector is continuing to expand rapidly, Tam said Aussie's still have a way to go if they want to catch up with China.
At his own company Spacer, a peer to peer marketplace for storage, "we find we have a high percentage of ethnic users, Chinese users, who very much appreciate making efficient use of assets as well as they can," Tam said.
"I think it is cultural, it has a strong user base in the Chinese community." Enditem
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