Beijing-based bicycle rental start-up ‘ofo', which announced the launch its services in India in February, is reportedly scaling back its operations in India. According to this report on TechNode, ofo has laid of resources concerned with operations in India, owing to a cash crunch. The company entered in India early this year starting with Pune, Coimbatore, Indore and then expanded to more cities like Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, and Chennai. It has reportedly shut down its operations in all cities except Pune. In a statement shared with MediaNama, Ofo's spokesperson said that Our rapid expansion last year gave us the opportunity to better understand the international business. Our focus now is on our priority markets and moving towards profitability. We are communicating with our local markets about our plans to move forward. The company did not answer our question on whether they are shutting the shop in India, neither did it provide any further details. Started in 2014, ofo claims to have the operations in 250 cities across 21 countries including India and claims to have 200 million users globally. The company, which raised $866 million from Alibaba Group & others in March is reportedly going through a major cash crunch and hence laying off and scaling back operations in other countries as well. There are reports that it has shut shop in Australia, Chicago, Israel as well as in other Middle Eastern countries. Why? As we earlier pointed out, that despite the fact that bicycle sharing was a million-dollar business in China, and recently started following the same boom in India with the…
