African e-mobility company to raise $100mn in round led by Afreximbank

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Spiro, which manufactures electric motorbikes in four African countries, has raised $100mn to expand production in what it says is the biggest capital raise in the continent’s nascent but crowded e-mobility sector.

The Fund for Export Development in Africa, the impact investment subsidiary of Cairo-based Afreximbank, is to invest $75mn with the rest coming from an unnamed venture capital firm.

Spiro, a subsidiary of Dubai-based Equitane, an investment vehicle with holdings across Africa, said it would use the money to expand bike production to 15,000 a month from assembly lines in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda. It would also increase battery manufacturing on the continent, it said.

Spiro said it would have 100,000 vehicles on the road by the end of 2025, a fivefold increase from a year earlier.

Kaushik Burman, chief executive of Spiro, which was founded in 2022, said riders were “rapidly shifting from petrol motorcycles to Spiro’s electric bikes because they are more affordable to operate, easier to maintain and deliver higher daily earnings”.

He estimated that running costs for electric vehicles were at least 30 per cent cheaper than for petrol bikes.

The motorbikes retail from $800 to $1,000, with many used by two-wheel hailing app services, such as Bolt, or by food and other delivery companies.

The bikes are manufactured from knockdown kits imported from China, with some spares from India, though Spiro claims to have increased local content to 30 per cent of the bike’s value.

Spiro operates 1,200 battery swapping stations across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Benin and Togo and said it would increase this number to 3,500 by the end of the year.

Deepak Dave, director of Autonomi Capital, an Africa-focused boutique investment bank, said many companies in the African e-mobility sector had raised capital, but he questioned what would happen when bikes began to age and drivers started missing payments.

“Some of these companies are putting bikes out there and hoping for the best,” he said. “You want to be the last company standing at the end.”

Other companies in the e-mobility space include Nairobi-based Roam, which manufactures electric buses as well as bikes, Ecobodaa, also in Kenya, and Ampersand in Rwanda.

Tope Lawani, managing partner of Helios Investment Partners, an Africa-focused private investment firm, said: “The challenge with building bikes is that then you’re a manufacturer”. That meant building out sales networks and developing new models every few years, he said, making it a capital-intensive business.

Lawani said Helios had invested in Sun Systems, a pay-as-you-go battery swapping service, whose batteries were compatible with bikes from most Chinese and Indian manufacturers.

Spiro had previous investments of about $180mn, with $63mn in debt provided by Société Générale, and the rest in equity from Equitane, its parent.

This article has been amended to correct the name of analyst Deepak Dave