Roam押注肯尼亚的摩托车和公交车电动化；2400万美元A轮融资支持本地组装

做的是什么生意

Designs and assembles electric motorcycles (Roam Air) and mass-transit buses (Roam Move, Roam Rapid) in Kenya, with swappable batteries, charging infrastructure and a fleet of converted commercial vehicles.

启动资金：$5M equity plus $2.5M in grants in the 2021 pre-Series A, after earlier angel funding

起因

Founded in 2017 as Opibus by Filip Gardler, Filip Lövström and Mikael Gånge, a Swedish-Kenyan team. It became the first company in Kenya to commercially convert diesel and gasoline vehicles to electric, retrofitting 170 vehicles for mining companies and tour firms, before concluding that conversions could not scale fast enough for motorcycles and deciding to design and manufacture its own vehicles instead.

经过

In November 2021 Opibus raised a $7.5M pre-Series A — $5M equity led by At One Ventures with Factor[e] Ventures and Ambo Ventures, plus $2.5M in grants — and shifted to mass production, taking pre-orders for electric motorcycles starting at $1,300 and claiming operating costs up to 60% lower than petrol alternatives. It rebranded as Roam in April 2022, launched the Roam Air motorcycle with two swappable battery packs, and in September 2023 launched the Roam Move: a 42-seater bus with a 200km range, assembled in Kenya from Chinese parts, priced at $135,000, with 50 orders booked. In February 2024 it raised a $24M Series A — $14M equity led by Equator with At One Ventures, TES Ventures, Renew Capital, The World We Want and One Small Planet, plus a $10M debt commitment from the US DFC.

结果

Still running and scaling: after the Series A, Roam aimed for production of 1,000 motorcycles a month, ran East Africa's largest electric motorcycle plant at its ROAM Park facility, and targeted output of 50,000 units a year.

可借鉴之处

改装证明了需求但无法规模化：Roam转向本地设计和组装，押注非洲本土电动车在运营成本上能击败进口燃油车。