The issue of electric mobility in Africa has always been one of the promises of development. Infrastructure is scarce, power grids are unreliable, and many markets continue to run on imported motorcycles. But Dubai-headquartered Spipi Spiro has spent the past two years trying to rewrite that narrative.
The company recently announced a 100 million investment round led by the Fund for Foreign Development in Africa (FEDA), the development arm of AFREXIMBBANCK. The move marks EV’s biggest investment in EV travel and Spiro in Spiro as the continent’s most aggressive motorcycle company.
Spiro says it plans to ship more than 100,000 electric bicycles to Africa by the end of 2025, a 400% year-on-year jump that underlines its desire to dominate the scale for a long time.
Spiro’s growth has been falling apart. When Ceo Kaushik Burman came two years ago from Taiwan to the battery exchange Gagoro, the startup had 8,000 electric bicycles and 150 exchange stations distributed between the neighboring countries of Benin and Togo.
Today, it operates in six countries – including Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda – with more than 60,000 bikes in exchange, where passengers can exchange, where passengers can exchange reduced batteries and no new charges. Battery replacements range from 4 million in 2022 to 27 million this year, Burman told techCrunch.
The secret behind that growth, says Burman, is a business model built on African realities.
In African cities, motorcycle taxis – not known as Boda Boda in Kenya or he barks In Nigeria – move people and goods through integrated cities and rural towns alike. But with millions of commuters relying on them, fuel costs are punishing.
“These drivers spend 10 to 12 hours on the road every day, covering 150 to 200 kilometers while paying high fuel costs. At the end of each day,” Burman said. “That’s why electric mobility, especially with the battery exchange model, fits this segment very well. They can’t afford downtime and earn money.”
That is the marriage spiro depends on. According to Burman, their electric bikes cost about 40% less than the new gasoline models. In Kenya or Rwanda, where a typical gas bike sells for $1,300-$1,500-$1,500, Spipo’s Bikes costs about $800 and costs about a kilometer of batteries, since the batteries are cheaper than the incentives to exceed the power, he said.
This combination of low costs and quick payback has made Spipi’s model of air in the eyes of taxi drivers. Burman says that many passengers – who pay a daily fee to access its energy network – Save up to $3 a day on fuel and maintenance. “It’s enough to buy another bike or start a small business later,” said the CEO.
