Spiro, a Dubai-headquartered electric mobility company, secured $100 million in its latest funding round, marking Africa’s largest-ever electric vehicle mobility investment. The Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the development arm of Afreximbank, led the round with $75 million, while the remaining $25 million came from other strategic investors. This substantial capital injection brings Spiro’s total raised funding to over $280 million, combining both debt and equity from previous backers including the Equitane Group (Spiro’s parent company) and Société Générale.
Spiro’s $100m investment is earmarked for aggressive expansion across multiple fronts. The company intends to scale its battery-swapping network and manufacturing infrastructure across existing and new African markets. The company plans to deploy more than 100,000 electric bikes across the continent by the end of 2025, representing a 400% year-over-year increase from its current fleet. Beyond fleet expansion, the capital will fund research and development initiatives, enhance local manufacturing capacity with a target of increasing local component sourcing from 30% to 70% within two years, and support pilot launches in emerging markets including Cameroon and Tanzania. The investment will also bolster Spiro’s proprietary battery management system production and expand its network of swap stations, which currently stands at 1,500 locations across six countries.
Why The Investors Invested
The investment reflects confidence in Spiro’s demonstrated ability to achieve rapid, measurable scale in challenging markets. Over two years, the company expanded from 8,000 electric bikes and 150 swap stations in just Benin and Togo to over 60,000 bikes and 1,500 swap stations across six countries including Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. Battery swaps surged from 4 million in 2022 to over 27 million in the current year, providing concrete evidence of operational traction and market acceptance. This velocity of growth in infrastructure-challenged environments signals execution capability that development finance institutions value when deploying capital.
The business model addresses a massive, underserved market with compelling unit economics. Africa’s 25 million motorbikes represent merely a fraction of India’s 320 million despite comparable population sizes, revealing a 13x penetration gap that suggests enormous latent demand. Motorcycle taxis — boda bodas and okadas — serve as critical transportation infrastructure across African cities and rural areas, yet the millions of riders operating them face punishing fuel costs that consume most daily earnings. Spiro’s electric bikes cost approximately 40% less upfront than gasoline models ($800 versus $1,300–$1,500) and deliver 30% lower per-kilometer operating costs through battery swapping. Riders save up to $3 daily on fuel and maintenance, enough to enable asset accumulation or business diversification over time. These economics create a self-reinforcing adoption loop that reduces customer acquisition costs while building a sticky, recurring revenue base.
The dual revenue stream model — combining bike sales with battery-swapping network fees — creates infrastructure defensibility and operating leverage that traditional vehicle sales cannot match. Spiro owns the battery infrastructure and charges per swap, quickly achieving economies of scale as network density increases. The company has established four assembly and manufacturing facilities across Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda, assembling not just bikes but critical components including traction motors, controllers, and batteries with proprietary battery management systems. This vertical integration strategy, combined with partnerships that embed swap stations in gas stations, shopping centers, and religious institutions, builds structural competitive advantages that become more valuable as the network expands. The renewable energy integration and energy storage systems ensure network resilience even during power grid failures, addressing one of Africa’s most persistent infrastructure challenges.
Development finance institutions like FEDA prioritize investments that generate measurable socioeconomic impact alongside financial returns. Spiro’s operations create local employment through manufacturing facilities, swap station networks, and rider opportunities while addressing urban congestion and air quality concerns through electric mobility. The company’s commitment to increasing local component sourcing to 70% deepens economic value chains within African countries, aligning with development mandates around industrialization and job creation. The investment thesis likely incorporates climate finance considerations, given the displacement of gasoline-powered vehicles and integration of renewable energy infrastructure, themes increasingly central to development bank portfolios.
A Look At Spiro
Spiro, founded in 2019, underwent significant transformation two years ago when CEO Kaushik Burman joined from Gogoro, the Taiwanese battery-swapping giant. The company operates under the Equitane Group as its parent organization and maintains headquarters in Dubai while focusing operations entirely on African markets.
The startup specializes in electric mobility solutions specifically designed for Africa’s commercial motorcycle taxi sector. Unlike consumer-focused EV companies, Spiro targets professional riders who depend on motorcycles for daily income, addressing the unique challenges of long operating hours (10–12 hours daily), high mileage (150–200 kilometers), and financial constraints that characterize this segment. The company manufactures and distributes electric motorcycles while building and operating a comprehensive battery-swapping infrastructure that eliminates vehicle downtime, a critical consideration for riders whose livelihoods depend on continuous operation.
Spiro currently operates across six African countries: Benin, Togo, Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda, with these markets serving as primary operational bases. The company has established manufacturing presence in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda through four assembly facilities that produce complete bikes and key components. The battery-swapping network consists of 1,500 stations strategically located in gas stations, shopping centers, and religious institutions through partnership agreements that simultaneously create local employment opportunities. Each swap station houses dozens of continuously recharged batteries, and riders are billed through a proprietary algorithm that measures actual energy consumption rather than fixed subscription fees.
The company’s technology infrastructure includes proprietary battery management systems manufactured in Kenya and renewable energy integration with energy storage capabilities to maintain operations during grid blackouts, a common occurrence across African markets. Spiro positions itself not against other electric vehicle startups like Ampersand, ROAM, Max, or BasiGo, but rather against the entire gasoline motorcycle segment — both new and secondhand — and the millions of potential riders who currently lack access to affordable transportation and employment opportunities. This positioning reflects the company’s understanding that the primary barrier to growth is not competitive displacement but market creation in a dramatically underpenetrated sector.