Photo/NBD

Sept.6 (NBD) -- Chinese bike-sharing company Ofo is near to close its E2-2 round financing, which is co-invested by Alibaba's Ant Financial and ride-hailing platform Didi, according to tech news portal All Weather TMT.

When reached by the news portal, Ofo said the deal might be true, but Ant Financial declined to comment.

If this is true, the new round of financing will, to some extent, help users regain confidence in Ofo, which has gone through a tough time.

The bike-sharing company raised 866 million U.S. dollars in its E2-1 round of financing five months ago, but apparently, the investment didn't ease its cash crunch.

On Wednesday, a user complained to Southern Metropolis Daily that he couldn't get back his deposit of 199 yuan (29.2 U.S. dollars) from Ofo. The platform's offline customer service center cannot be reached through the number shown on its app, and its online customer service center said it has no right to deal with the deposit issue.

In late August, Shanghai Phoenix Bicycle Co., Ltd (Phoenix Bicycle) filed a lawsuit against Dongxia Datong (Beijing) Management and Consulting Co., Ltd. (Dongxia Datong), the operator of Ofo.

Phoenix Bicycle asked Dongxia Datong to repay debt of 68.15 million yuan (10.0 million U.S. dollars), overdue fee of 1.86 million yuan (272,659.3 U.S. dollars), lawyer fee and guarantee fee of 200,000 yuan (29,318.2 U.S. dollars) as well as other fees.

In the same month, Ofo was reportedly sold to Didi for 2 billion U.S. dollars and the company's co-founders except Dai Wei have been ousted from the company. But the report was quickly refuted by Yu Xin, a co-founder of Ofo, on his Wechat account.

In addition to securing new investment, the bike-sharing company is actively developing new profit drivers. On August 22, Ofo launched short video ads on its app, but the new service has generated discontent among users as they are forced to watch the ads for 5 second before unlocking bikes.

Email: tanyuhan@nbd.com.cn