315 named and shamed! Hellobike's cross-border sprint: offline removes speed limits, online pushes lending

Ask AI · From Two Wheels to Four Wheels, Why Has Hello’s Expansion Faced Repeated Setbacks?

Text | Zhu Yuting Feng Biao

Editor | Liu Peng

On March 15th, a privately modified, overspeed electric bicycle was exposed on CCTV’s 315 Evening Gala. Some of the modified electric bikes sold in live streams far exceeded national standards in various parameters, posing risks of speeding and becoming hidden dangers on the road.

It is noteworthy that Hello, which continues to expand in the travel sector, has become a representative company of this chaos and is the only well-known enterprise exposed on the 2026 315 Gala.

During the program, Manager Mi, the provincial recruitment manager for Hello’s electric scooter rentals, stated that although some of the models they rent out do not meet the new national standards and regulations are tightening, they still have ways to help franchisees with license plate registration, promising that every vehicle can be officially registered as an electric bicycle, and even when the vehicles are not yet produced, the license plates are already in place.

This behavior of “limiting speed” to cater to certain market demands, disregarding consumer safety and regulatory red lines, appears on the surface to be a profit-driven move by offline dealers. However, a deeper look into the underlying business logic reveals it as a metaphor for Hello’s business expansion history since its founding in 2016.

Hello’s Expansion Path: From Two Wheels to Four Wheels, Nearly 5 Billion Loss, Failed IPO

Qixinbao data shows that Shanghai Hello Puhui Technology Co., Ltd. was established on March 4, 2016, with a registered capital of 4.4 billion yuan. The legal representative is Wu Xiaolong. Its business scope includes machinery equipment leasing; shared bicycle services; micro and small vehicle leasing services; sales of charging piles; operation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure; centralized fast charging stations; leasing of charging control equipment, etc. According to Qixin’s risk reports, in the past three months, the company has 33 judicial case records, 1 enforcement record, and 6 administrative penalty records.

Starting from bicycle sharing, Hello has now expanded into mobility services such as electric assist bikes, carpooling, ride-hailing, as well as new local life services like electric vehicle leasing and battery swapping. In the lifestyle service sector, Hello has extended into hotel accommodations and group buying; in manufacturing, Hello has invested heavily in R&D, manufacturing, and offline sales of electric bicycles.

According to Hello Electric’s official website, the company has established over 5,000 stores in more than 100 cities nationwide.

However, looking back to 2016 when Hello was founded, at that time, Ofo and Mobike were leading the market. Hello, with the smallest capital and reputation, was forced to compete in a niche, surviving mainly in third- and fourth-tier cities and sinking markets.

The turning point came in 2018 when Ant Group entered the scene as a strategic investor, injecting substantial funds into Hello and integrating it into Alibaba’s traffic ecosystem.

With the help of Alipay’s traffic portal and Sesame Credit’s credit endorsement, Hello was able to launch deposit-free riding, rapidly expanding amidst industry reshuffling, forming a new tripartite competition with Meituan Bike and Didi Qingju.

However, Ant Group’s support came at a cost.

According to public information, Hello’s operating entity is Shanghai Hello Puhui Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Hello Puhui”), with a registered capital of 4.4 billion yuan. Its parent company is Jiangsu Hello Puhui Technology Co., Ltd.

For Hello, a more critical timeline is 2021, when it announced plans for a U.S. IPO aiming to raise $1 billion. Data shows that Hello incurred losses exceeding 4.8 billion yuan from 2018 to 2020, with its profit model still not established. Coupled with the tightening regulation of Chinese concept stocks at the time, the listing plan was forced to be shelved.

In 2025, Hello announced a 1.5 billion yuan acquisition of Yong Anxing, a listed company on the A-share market. This move was immediately interpreted as a key step for Hello to indirectly enter the A-share market.

Yong Anxing also focuses on shared mobility, with significant overlap in business with Hello. However, its recent performance has been declining; according to announcements, Yong Anxing is expected to report a net loss between 160 million and 200 million yuan in 2025. This means that the 1.5 billion yuan spent by Hello to acquire is not only for an A-share shell but also for a target company already in trouble.

Two Cracks in the Financial Map: Privacy Resale via “Nested” Authorization, Hidden High-Interest Rates

Beyond its main business, Hello is also exploring new financial ventures.

Hello’s financial layout began in 2019, when the profitability ceiling of shared bikes had become relatively clear: high depreciation, high maintenance costs, strict regulation, and difficulty achieving positive cash flow from riding income.

Therefore, Hello chose a classic platform company monetization path: leveraging its large user base to deliver traffic to financial institutions, earning loan referral commissions, and expanding high-margin products like insurance and credit cards.

Currently, Hello’s financial footprint covers loan facilitation, car mortgage loans, house mortgage loans, insurance brokerage, and credit card recommendations. Its representative financial product is “Zhen You Qian” (a loan referral platform).

The business logic is straightforward: the travel data and credit profiles accumulated on Hello’s platform can provide risk control references for financial institutions; the platform earns profit sharing through traffic diversion, operating with a light asset model and high margins—seemingly a standard evolution for a mobility platform.

However, problems arise at the execution level.

According to user feedback, when applying for loans via “Zhen You Qian,” the system requires “one-click authorization” to agree to multiple agreements from three different institutions, which are backed by over 50 nested personal information query authorizations. Industry insiders call this “nested” or “bundled” authorization.

Users, often unaware, have their personal information broadly authorized to multiple financial institutions and data intermediaries, leading to incessant loan solicitation calls and SMS spam. This treats user privacy as a commodity for sale, using “user consent” as a shield, skirting regulatory boundaries.

Hello has systemic compliance issues in data management. In September 2025, Hello Car Rental was publicly reported by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center for issues such as “lack of a personal information withdrawal method” and “automated marketing without non-targeted options.”

Apart from data compliance, Hello’s financial business faces another major concern: high interest rates.

Some users report that the actual total cost of loans obtained through Hello’s loan platform far exceeds the displayed interest rate. On a complaint platform, searches for “Hello Car Rental” or “Hello Ride” have accumulated over 36,000 complaints. These include issues like merchants not returning vehicles as agreed, leading consumers to bear violations and parking fees; violations deducted amounts ranging from 700 to 1,200 yuan; renting a 7-seat business vehicle but receiving a 5-seat pickup; being provided with non-operational or uninspected vehicles; and being pressured to buy additional services like “basic insurance” with refusal resulting in no vehicle delivery.

There are also reports of “chain traps,” where consumers are asked for extra insurance fees and falsely accused of violations, with fines and deductions exceeding 1,000 yuan. Ms. Li, a consumer, recounted that after renting with the “deposit-free” service and experiencing a minor scratch, the store demanded 4,000 yuan for downtime and depreciation fees.