Blue Earth Summit

When Filip Lövström talks about Roam Electric, you’re hearing two worlds at once.

Born in Sweden, raised across Kenya and Namibia, with a background in mechanical engineering and climate policy, Filip has spent his life between European boardrooms and African streets. Roam is where those two paths meet: a company using electric motorbikes to transform transport, incomes and emissions across sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2025, Roam were semi-finalists in the Growth category of the BE100 competition. They’ve now joined Blue Earth Ventures, working with us to raise a £20 million Series B to scale what may be one of the biggest automotive opportunities in the world.

• Listen to the full episode on Spotify
• Watch the full episode on YouTube

---

The Problem: 25 Million Petrol Bikes, and Counting

Across sub-Saharan Africa today:

• There are around 25 million motorcycles on the road

• The market is growing by roughly 4 million bikes every year

These motorbikes power everyday life: taxi rides, deliveries, informal logistics, commuting. They’re also overwhelmingly petrol-powered, locking riders into high, volatile running costs and pumping emissions into already congested cities.

Filip’s conviction is clear:

100% of those motorcycles could be electric.
100% of those motorcycles should be electric.

The challenge is not the technology. It’s building the right product on the right business model, one that works for a boda boda rider in Nairobi today, not a showroom in Europe.

 

Roam Today: Built in Nairobi, for Nairobi (and Beyond)

Roam’s headquarters sit in Nairobi, where everything happens under one roof:

• A factory assembling Roam motorbikes

• An engineering team designing and refining components

• A back office coordinating financing, operations and service

Roam started in 2018, initially building low-volume, high-margin electric vehicles to fund the early years. By 2020, the team had enough experience, data and confidence to tackle the real target: mass-market electric motorcycles.

Key features of the Roam motorbike:

• 80–160 km of range, depending on whether the rider uses one or two batteries

• A chassis and component set designed for African roads and workloads

• Heavy use of standardised components (e.g. rear shocks) to keep costs low and sourcing flexible

• A price point that is competitive with petrol bikes when financed, and significantly cheaper to run

Roam isn’t trying to reinvent what a motorbike looks like. It’s making a bike that can survive 12-hour days, rough terrain, heavy loads – and still deliver better economics for the person in the saddle.

 

The Real Disruption: Doubling Daily Income

For most Roam customers, the climate story is secondary. What matters is money.

Thanks to lower energy and maintenance costs, plus Roam’s asset-finance model, riders see a step change in their daily economics:

• From day one, riders can cut operating costs by around 35% compared to a petrol bike

• Once the bike is fully paid off, that saving rises to around 80% per day

• In practice, that can mean going from $3–4 per day in income to $6–8 per day

For a rider supporting a family, that’s transformational.

“It’s very exciting that someone can buy your product and then double their daily income,” says Filip.

Roam currently sells 300–400 bikes per month. According to Filip, they could sell three to four times more, the constraint isn’t demand, it’s working capital to buy and assemble more components.

 

Charging Without Friction

Electric vehicles always raise the same questions: Where do I charge? What if I run out?

Roam has designed its charging ecosystem to be as flexible and user-led as possible.

Every Roam bike comes with:

• One battery (with the option to add a second)

• Two helmets and two vests

• A charger that plugs into a standard socket

Riders can then choose:

1. Home charging – plugging the battery or bike into any normal outlet.

2. Public fast charging – using Roam’s growing network of chargers.

3. Roam Hubs – staffed stations where riders can:

   • Drop off batteries to be charged

   • Rent extra batteries for more range

   • Access light servicing and support

Crucially, Roam doesn’t lock users in. There’s no mandatory subscription or closed ecosystem. Riders are free to charge wherever makes sense.

“People will only come to us and buy our services if we provide a good service,” Filip says. “We’re not constraining anyone. We’ve picked the model that is most consumer-centric.”

 

Capital Efficiency in a Hardware World

Hardware is hard. Hardware in emerging markets is even harder. Yet Roam has achieved a level of capital efficiency that stands out.

Before any institutional funding, Roam spent three years being entirely revenue-funded. They built solar systems, bespoke vehicles and anything else that could generate margin, simply to keep going. That discipline is now baked into the culture.

Today:

• Roam has deployed around 4,000 motorcycles in just 2.5 years of commercial operation

• The company has been growing at roughly 3x per year

• It currently deploys 300–400 units per month

• It is already profitable at unit level – a milestone that many global automotive players can take years to achieve on new products

To date, Roam has raised around $17–18 million across a pre-Series A (2021) and Series A (2023). That’s been enough to:

• Build and operate a factory in Nairobi

• Assemble a skilled engineering and operations team

• Prove strong product–market fit

• Reach unit-level profitability with a clear path to company-level break-even

 

Why Investors Care

Roam attracts interest from multiple angles:

• Climate and impact investors – who see a clear route to decarbonising transport and improving livelihoods

• Emerging markets specialists – drawn to a solution built inside the ecosystem it serves

• Mobility and hardware VCs – focused on the scale of the opportunity and strength of the unit economics

But Filip is clear about the core story:

“Fundamentally, this is just a really good business to invest in. It has the returns you need for a strong multiple. On top of that, it’s green. On top of that, it creates jobs and economic growth in emerging markets.”

In other words, you don’t have to buy into “impact investing” as a label. Roam first and foremost works as a business, the climate and social outcomes follow from that.

 

Partnering With Blue Earth Ventures: A £20m Series B

After standing out as BE100 Growth semi-finalists, Roam have now joined the Blue Earth Ventures community.

Together, we’re working with Filip and his team to raise a £20 million Series B.

This round is designed to:

• Unlock the working capital required to move from hundreds to thousands of bikes per month

• Invest further in distribution and infrastructure, not just engineering

• Take Roam to company-level profitability, so future capital is optional and purely for acceleration

In a post-COVID, higher-rate environment, raising for hardware in emerging markets is not straightforward. But Roam sits in a rare sweet spot: strong fundamentals, real-world traction, and a clear line of sight to break-even.

This is exactly the type of business Blue Earth Ventures exists to support: solutions that radically outcompete the status quo and deliver people, planet and profit in the same equation.

 

The Size of the Prize: A Pan-African Platform

Looking ahead 5–10 years, Roam’s ambitions are big – and realistic.

• The target is to become a pan-African company, with distribution across the majority of countries on the continent.

• With 4 million new motorcycles entering the market every year, and demand for transport rising alongside population and urbanisation, the upside is enormous.

• Urbanisation in many African regions is outpacing population growth, increasing the need for efficient, affordable urban mobility.

Filip doesn’t shy away from the scale:

“This is probably the biggest automotive opportunity the world has ever seen.”

Compound Roam’s current 3x annual growth over just a few years, and that statement starts to feel less like hype and more like simple maths.

 

Beyond Climate: Wellbeing on Two Wheels

At Blue Earth, our mission is to find and fund organisations committed to delivering wellbeing for everyone, forever. Roam sits squarely in that frame.

• For riders: a path to doubling daily income, building resilience and supporting families.

• For cities: cleaner air, quieter streets and a shift away from fossil fuel dependency.

• For the planet: fewer petrol engines, lower emissions, and a scalable template for clean mobility in high-growth markets.

• For investors: a capital-efficient, fast-growing business with real-world product–market fit and strong unit economics.

Perhaps most importantly, Roam proves that climate action doesn’t have to be sold as climate action.

If you build a product that is:

• Better to ride

• Cheaper to run

• More reliable to own

…people will choose it for their own reasons, and the climate wins by default.

 

Interested in Backing Roam?

Roam Electric is currently working with Blue Earth Ventures to raise a £20 million Series B.

If you’re an investor interested in:

• High-growth, hardware-backed businesses

• Climate solutions with proven unit economics

• Scalable impact across people, planet and profit

Get in touch with the Blue Earth Ventures team to learn more about the Roam opportunity and our wider portfolio: [email protected]