Electric motorcycles: Zyp Technologies announces $1.5mn Series Pre-A funding

Zyp Technologies, which operates in the energy and electric motorcycle assembly space, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $1.5 million in Series Pre-A funding led by Abu Dhabi-based Shorooq Partners.

Karachi’s Indus Valley Capital doubled down in the round, joined by several angel investors, the company added.

The startup, which has an assembly plant in Lahore where it now has the capacity to produce 12,000 electric motorcycles a year, had earlier raised $1.2 million in a seed round in September last year. At the time, its production capacity stood at 8,000 units.

The funding will help enable a city-wide launch of Zyp’s electric smart mobility technologies in Lahore.

“With this investment, Zyp will create over 60 battery swap stations and deploy 1,000 of its Zyp Utility Motorcycles (ZUM 2000) in the next 12 months,” it added in a statement.

“The launch aligns with Pakistan’s National Electric Vehicle Policy, which aims for electric vehicles to account for 30 percent of all vehicles sold in Pakistan by 2030.”

Zyp Technologies, which says it was among the 31 companies that received licences for the manufacturing of electric vehicles in October 2023, also plans a mass release of motorcycles in multiple Gulf nations including the UAE in 2025.

Hassan Khan, co-founder and CEO of Zyp Technologies, said the investment accelerates the company towards achieving Pakistan’s electric vehicle ambitions by 2030.

“Zyp is removing affordability barriers for high-quality electric vehicles designed specifically for Pakistan’s tough environment, where extreme temperatures and bumpy roads abound,” Khan was quoted as saying in the statement.

“Our trials have shown people love our smart vehicles and their quick refueling capability.”

Omer Zabit, Principal at Shorooq Partners, said the investment in Zyp Technologies will drive significant environmental and economic benefits for Pakistan in the long term by addressing some of the challenges that delivery companies and the mobility industry typically face.

“We see this as an opportunity to support more sustainable innovations in emerging markets,” Zabit stated.

Zyp Technologies, founded in September 2022, has two business lines – motorcycles and battery service. Its energy division, through which it provides battery-as-a-service (BaaS), is based in Islamabad.

Its Series Pre-A funding announcement comes at a time when startup financing has dried up in Pakistan with high interest rates, economic as well as political uncertainties, and a general negative outlook on the debt-ridden economy turning away investors.

A paltry amount of $3 million was raised in the first half of 2024, showed data recently released by Magnitt, a data analytics platform, a far cry from calendar year 2021 when Pakistan’s startups raised a record amount of $350 million followed by another impressive 12 months the next year.

“It certainly has not been easy to raise (funds) in this climate but our product traction made it successful for us,” Khan told Business Recorder via message when asked about the difficult environment in which the startup raised money.