ORide, the bike hailing service operated by OPay, has confirmed it is selling off some of its 200cc motorbikes. The move was expected following the February ban on passenger motorcycles in major parts of Lagos.
While ORide’s bike hailing operation still functions in places like Ibadan, the service is now finalizing its pivot into a logistics business in Lagos. It will sell only a “small percentage” of its motorbikes and retain the rest for its new delivery business called OExpress. It joins Gokada and MAX, two bike hailing companies that have pivoted to logistics.
“As ORide Services launches into the delivery business, the company is making available for sale a small percentage of its motorbike inventory,” Moses Awolowo, Director Of Operations and Business Development at OExpress told TechCabal in an email.
ORide and OExpress are both owned by a company called Many Wheels Services. Many Wheels is wholly owned by OPay and operates the fintech company’s transportation verticals including ORide, OCar and OBus, the defunct bus hailing service.
By operating these services under a different corporate entity, OPay remains a finance company and doesn’t have to change its corporate Memorandum of Association every time it wants to introduce a new vertical.
The news of the bike sales was first reported on social media a few weeks ago. A Twitter user posted that “OPay is selling off bikes for 180k [each].” At the time, OPay did not confirm the story.
Now, however, sources at the company have confirmed that it has been selling the motorbikes for the last few weeks. A source at the company’s warehouse in Lagos told TechCabal that the bikes are sold between ₦180,000 and ₦270,000, depending on how long they have been in use.
Another anonymous source at OPay claims the bike hailing service has 8,000 motorbikes in its inventory, a claim we could not independently verify.
“But we don’t need that many bikes to do deliveries,” the source said. The plan is to sell off half these bikes, then onboard the rest for the OExpress delivery service.
Awolowo confirmed this narrative. “We have more than enough bikes for OExpress,” he told TechCabal, “it only makes sense to sell the rest not needed.”
Sources at OPay’s warehouse say the bikes are selling fast as individuals and other logistics companies are trying to snap up many of them.
This could increase competition in the logistic industry as each operator increases the number of motorbikes in their inventory.
