Irwan Tjahaja and the nine-second argument

Nine seconds is a curious unit in which to sell a vision of the future. It is barely enough time to find your keys. In July 2021, Irwan Tjahaja was talking about an electric motorcycle battery exchange that took that long, and about the hundred exchange points his business already had in Jakarta. The proposition was wonderfully unceremonious: arrive with a depleted battery, leave with a charged one, continue riding.

Tjahaja, co-founder and CEO of Swap Energi, had chosen a problem that announces itself at precisely the wrong moment. A rider needs to go somewhere. The battery needs to spend time doing something else. His business puts charged batteries along the route so the two schedules can stop arguing.

For someone considering an electric motorcycle, the appeal is practical. A journey has to work on the day it is taken. A purchase made in confidence can become an expensive worry if the next charge is hard to find. Tjahaja’s nine-second argument began with that ordinary wish to keep moving.

The battery got bigger

His route to motorcycles began with much smaller devices. In 2001, Tjahaja went to China to do business, initially exporting mobile phones to Indonesia. He subsequently established a factory making phone batteries, chargers and related accessories for that market. In 2014, he co-founded the shared power-bank business Laidian with friends and handled its hardware manufacturing. By 2019, he had left Laidian and established Swap in Indonesia.

The continuity matters. Phone accessories and motorcycle infrastructure are different businesses, but both place stored electricity between a person and an interruption. Tjahaja brought manufacturing experience to a business whose promise would depend on physical equipment showing up and working.

He also founded ReCharge, an app-based power-bank rental service. Long before Swap’s cabinets became part of a rider’s route, portable energy and the means of borrowing it were already recurring subjects in his career.

His educational background includes UNSW. The more revealing education in this story is the succession of products: batteries made for sale, batteries made for sharing, and batteries that let a motorcycle leave without waiting for its own pack to charge. The scale changed. The inconvenience remained recognisable.

Why the motorcycle needed a second name

Swap launched its electric motorcycle brand, Smoot, in 2021. The two names describe two different parts of the proposition. Smoot supplies the vehicle. Swap supplies the battery system and the places where a rider exchanges a pack. Keeping those identities distinct was a deliberate choice.

In a July 2021 discussion, Tjahaja explained that separating the brands would allow other motorcycle makers to use Swap. Smoot would demonstrate that the system worked, giving potential partners something to examine beyond an invitation to believe. A functioning motorcycle is a rather persuasive item to bring to a meeting.

That ambition makes the founder’s job more complicated than selling a new bike. A vehicle can be bought once. Its energy supply must be useful repeatedly. The first transaction needs a working network behind it, and the network needs riders who return. Each side helps make the other credible.

The arrangement also changes what a customer is buying. The motorcycle brings the rider into a continuing service relationship. A pleasant first ride is only the beginning; the next exchange, the next available pack and the next familiar stop all become part of the product. Tjahaja’s decision to create Smoot gave that relationship a visible starting point.

By 2025, an Indonesian industrial-design publication named him as the designer of an electric motorcycle submitted by PT Smoot Motor Indonesia. His connection to the vehicle appears in a design record as well as in the company’s executive titles.

A cabinet has to earn its place

The rider’s version of this business has fewer moving parts than the founder’s. Find a station. Exchange a battery. Ride away. Behind that sequence sit hardware, electricity, stocked cabinets and an app. Swap’s own product description joins the battery, station and application into a shared system, with stations placed at petrol stations and convenience stores.

Those locations make sense in the language of everyday errands. A familiar shop is easier to place on a route than an unfamiliar piece of infrastructure. The point is to make the exchange fit into a journey the rider already understands.

Tjahaja’s early customer service sometimes went considerably beyond an app. When a station failed, he personally delivered batteries and apologised to customers. Swap also developed exchanges that could work offline when connectivity was unreliable. Both details put a practical edge on the word service: a rider stranded by equipment needs a battery before an explanation.

The story is easy to read as evidence of an involved founder. It also describes the obligation he was taking on. Every cabinet was a promise made locally, to the next person who arrived at it. Advertising could introduce that promise. Available batteries had to keep it.

The work of explaining

In 2023, Tjahaja described prospective customers as curious and said the company had a duty to explain its products. Their questions were sensible: would the vehicle be strong enough, would its range compare with a petrol motorcycle, and what would spare parts and maintenance cost? These are questions asked by people who expect their transport to be useful for years.

Swap worked with existing users to help introduce the system. Co-founder Kevin Phang described satisfied Smoot riders as ambassadors who could share their experiences with family and friends. An owner who has completed the journey is in a good position to discuss whether the journey works.

The app supported that conversation with concrete functions, including finding nearby stations and tracking battery reservations. A user named Ongko described the convenience of exchanging batteries without needing a charging station at home. His account gives the business an everyday setting: a working person organising a commute, rather than an abstract consumer adopting a technology.

Tjahaja’s explanation has to survive those everyday tests. Can the owner find a pack? Can the rider make another trip? Does the service remain convenient after the novelty has worn off? A new category becomes familiar through repeated use, with each successful exchange doing a little of the explaining.

Four companies, one rider

On March 21, 2022, Smoot, Swap, Grab and Indonesia’s state electricity company PLN signed a collaboration agreement. The combination brought together motorcycles, battery exchanges, a transport platform and an electricity provider. For Tjahaja, it connected the company’s equipment to people whose work involved spending substantial time on the road.

Swap’s placement partnerships included Alfamart, Alfamidi and Shell in Greater Jakarta, and Circle-K in Bali. The network then described more than 400 exchange points. The useful detail is their place in existing commercial life: riders could recognise a shop or a petrol station while learning a new way to replenish energy.

The partnership gave the business a setting beyond a showroom. Delivery and ride-hailing work offered repeated journeys, frequent energy needs and customers with a clear reason to care about waiting. Convenience becomes easier to judge when a delay sits inside a working day.

Tjahaja was also making a public argument about adoption. At a June 2022 discussion, he suggested that making battery exchange a common product could give government more confidence to regulate the sector. That position puts some responsibility on the entrepreneur: build something people use, then bring that experience into the wider conversation.

The money follows the hardware

Tjahaja’s priorities in March 2022 were specific: infrastructure, the driving experience and after-sales service. Swap announced a pre-Series A round led by Kejora-SBI Orbit, with participants including Baramulti Group, Living Lab Ventures and New Energy Nexus Indonesia. The money was intended to accelerate deployment and partnerships.

New Energy Nexus’s support also included introductions to potential investors, help with funding documents and business acceleration. The founder’s work required relationships as well as manufacturing. An exchange cabinet needs a location and electricity; a growing company needs people willing to help it finance the next batch.

The larger funding milestone arrived with a $22 million Series A reported in January 2024. Qiming Venture Partners led the round, with participation from GGV Capital and Ondine Capital. The round closed in December 2023.

By December 2023, the company reported more than 15,000 registered Smoot motorcycles, over 1,300 battery-swapping stations and more than 20,000 deployed battery packs. Each count describes a different task. Motorcycles need buyers. Stations need locations. Batteries need to be available when someone arrives.

Swap also won a 2022 World Summit Award in Environment & Green Energy. Recognition gave the company another public milestone. The equipment still had to perform the less ceremonial work of serving riders.

When the market changes its mind

By April 2025, the economics around electric motorcycle sales had become less accommodating. Swap had sold about 2,000 vehicles since the start of the year, compared with approximately 7,000 during a three-month period the previous year, when Indonesia offered a seven-million-rupiah purchase subsidy. Those figures describe different trading conditions, rather than a clean experiment, but the change was substantial.

Kevin Phang said uncertainty about subsidies made planning difficult. He also described Swap’s focus on delivery and ride-hailing drivers and its daily energy packages. For these customers, distance travelled and operating costs were immediate considerations.

A later fleet agreement shows how that practical market continued to matter. On October 24, 2025, PT Rider Gate Indonesia entered a cooperation agreement with Smoot and Swap for motorcycles and batteries in a Grab rental project. Tjahaja was Swap’s director, and the agreement specified the company’s responsibility to maintain battery continuity at exchange stations.

The contract gives a formal shape to the early promise. It concerns equipment that must be supplied, batteries that must meet specifications and a network that must support use. As the commercial arrangements grow more elaborate, the rider’s requirement stays direct: there needs to be energy for the next trip.

Every cabinet was a promise made locally, to the next person who arrived at it.

From this story

Friends, mint, and calculated risk

Tjahaja’s answers to a short April 2024 interview were brisk. He named Friends as his favourite television show and chocolate mint as his preferred ice-cream flavour. The future of electric vehicles was the subject he could discuss for hours. Apparently the batteries last longer when the conversation gets going.

His advice to someone entering the industry was equally compact: “Calculate your risk and just do it. And of course, with an experienced team.” That final qualification suits his career. Manufacturing, stations, motorcycles, software and partnerships give the word team quite a lot to cover.

He described founding Swap as his career’s biggest highlight and expressed surprise at how enjoyable and consequential it had become. The pleasure sits alongside a demanding proposition. A founder may enjoy building a network; a customer usually hopes to spend very little time thinking about it.

Tjahaja has spent much of his career working on the moments when people run out of power. At Swap, the ambition reaches into commutes, deliveries and another day’s work. The nine-second exchange offers an appropriately modest ending to all that effort. The rider gets a charged battery. The business keeps its promise. The day continues.