Fancy shooting some hoops, but don’t have a basketball? Caught in the rain with no umbrella? Smartphone run out of juice?
China’s rapidly expanding « sharing economy », which already provides car rides and bicycle hire on demand, can help.
For just 2 yuan ($0.30) an hour, Nate Liu, a student at the Beijing Language and Culture University, rents a basketball from a court-side vending machine by scanning a barcode on his smartphone.
« I didn’t want to ask around and borrow a ball after losing mine, so I decided to give it a try, » Liu told Reuters.
Far away, in China’s wetter south, some 20,000 umbrellas have been released on to the streets of Shenzhen, and can be rented – unlocked by another smartphone barcode scan – for just half a yuan ($0.07) for 30 minutes.
The umbrellas can be dropped off « wherever convenient », though users are encouraged to keep them, says Zhao Shuping, founder of E Umbrella Sharing, one of a handful of start-ups offering the service.
China’s government has taken notice, and expects the « sharing economy » to grow about 40 percent this year to 4.83 trillion yuan ($705 billion) . By 2020, it should account for around one tenth of GDP, illustrating China’s aspiration to become a sharing economy leader on a global scale.
PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts five sharing sectors – car sharing, travel, finance, staffing, and music and video streaming – have the potential to increase global revenue to $335 billion by 2025 from $15 billion today.
Most of the money behind China’s ballooning sharing economy comes from angel investors and venture capital firms.
At least 1.69 billion yuan ($247 million) in mostly series-A, or early stage, funding was invested in April-May in over two dozen start-ups offering sharing services, according to Reuters calculations based on data from Chinese data firm IT Juzi.
Twelve firms renting out power banks – typically compact, mobile battery chargers – secured 1.13 billion yuan, while newer businesses such as basketball and umbrella-sharing took in about 25 million yuan ($3.65 million) combined.
While mobile-savvy, convenience-obsessed Chinese welcome the innovations, some critics question whether the demand is real, or sustainable. They say the low-revenue, capital-intensive model means profitability can be elusive.
