The nine-second refuel rewiring how Indonesia powers its motorcycles.
Jakarta · Founded 2019 · ~62 employees
Swap Energi's brand mark. The company operates portable batteries, swap-station cabinets and its own SMOOT electric motorcycles across urban Indonesia.
In most of the world, going electric means learning to wait. You plug in, you charge, you plan your day around a battery's clock. Swap Energi built its whole business on a stubborn refusal of that premise. Pull into one of its stations, lift out a depleted battery, slide in a charged one, and ride off - the exchange takes about nine seconds, quicker than filling a petrol tank.
Founded in Jakarta in 2019, Swap Energi - legally PT Swap Energi Indonesia - has grown into the largest battery-swapping operator built natively for the Indonesian market. Its network of more than 1,500 stations sits inside the places riders already pass every day: Circle K outlets, Alfamart stores, gas stations and high-traffic warungs strung along delivery corridors. The company doesn't just sell a gadget. As its own tagline puts it, "It's not just a product, it's an ecosystem."
The target is enormous and specific. Indonesia has more than 125 million motorcycles, and almost none of them are electric. Swap treats that gap not as a marketing problem but as an energy-infrastructure one - and it is building batteries, stations, software and its own motorcycles in parallel to close it.
The Swap app points to the nearest station with charged batteries.
Secure digital sign-in unlocks the cabinet at the station.
Drop the empty pack, take a full one - about nine seconds.
Back on the road. No cable, no charging wait, no range math.
Charging is the wrong problem. A rider doesn't want a faster charger - they want to skip charging entirely.The premise behind Swap Energi's network
Two-wheelers are the circulatory system of Indonesian cities - couriers, food-delivery riders, commuters. For that crowd, downtime is lost income, and a bike that needs hours of charging is a non-starter. Swap's answer is to decouple the rider from the battery altogether. You never own the pack; you just borrow a charged one whenever you need it.
That shift solves several problems at once. It removes the biggest fear in EV adoption - running out of charge far from a plug. It slashes the upfront cost of going electric, because the battery, usually the most expensive component, isn't bundled into the purchase. And it turns "refueling" into a habit that fits the existing rhythm of a rider's day, since the stations live where they already stop.
Real-time monitoring keeps tabs on every pack's health, and a secure authentication layer protects each transaction - the digital plumbing that lets a physical network of thousands of interchangeable batteries actually function.
A smart, portable lithium-ion pack compatible with multiple e-motorcycle types, with real-time monitoring and secure digital authentication built in.
1,500+ swap cabinets hosted at Circle K, Alfamart, gas stations and warungs - enabling a battery exchange in about nine seconds.
The rider's cockpit: find stations, authenticate swaps, monitor battery status and manage transactions from a phone.
Swap's own charge-free smart motorcycle line, co-designed around the swap network. SMOOT won the OTOMOTIF Award 2022 for best electric scooter.
Swap keeps the expensive assets on its own balance sheet - the battery packs and the station cabinets - and monetizes the thing riders actually consume: energy. Revenue comes through per-swap and subscription fees, complemented by direct sales of SMOOT motorcycles. Treating the battery as a service, rather than a product to buy, is what makes electric affordable up front.
To de-risk each new station, the company leans on demand it can count on. Fleet partnerships with Grab and Lazada anchor a base of contracted delivery and ride-hail riders, so a location has guaranteed utilization before it even switches on. Consumer demand then scales on top of that floor.
The customers span two worlds. On the B2C and D2C side are everyday riders across Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung and Bali. On the B2B side are the delivery fleets whose economics live or die on uptime - exactly the users for whom a nine-second swap is worth the switch.
Seed led by Kejora-SBI Orbit · Pre-Series A led by Ondine Capital · Series A led by Qiming Venture Partners with GGV Capital & Ondine Capital. Seed amount undisclosed (bar illustrative).
Leads Swap Energi's strategy and the buildout of its national swap network.
Technology and entrepreneurship background shaping the company's direction.
Co-architect of Swap's growth and ecosystem strategy.
Hardware plus network plus app. Any one of the three is a company - Swap is building all three at once, and that's the whole moat.
Plenty of players sell electric motorcycles, and others operate charging or swap points. Swap's distinction is that it refuses to pick one. By owning the battery, the station and the app - and then designing its own SMOOT motorcycle to fit them - it controls the full loop from energy to rider. That vertical grip is hard for a single-product rival to replicate.
Its real competition is less another startup than the status quo: the tens of millions of petrol motorcycles already on the road. Here the tailwinds help - rising fuel prices and the return of Indonesia's electric-motorcycle subsidies in 2025 both nudge the math toward electric. Regional and local swap players such as Oyika and fixed-charging EV brands compete for the same riders, but Swap's bet is that a dense, convenient swap grid wins on the one currency riders care about most: time.
Irwan Tjahaja, Kevin Phang and Martin Zhuang launch a battery-swap network for Indonesian e-motorcycles.
The rider app goes live to locate stations, authenticate swaps and manage transactions.
Swap adds its own charge-free smart electric motorcycle line, built around the swap network.
Kejora-SBI Orbit leads a seed round; SMOOT wins the OTOMOTIF Award 2022 for best electric scooter.
Ondine Capital leads a round to expand the station footprint.
Qiming Venture Partners leads, with GGV Capital and Ondine; the network passes 1,500 stations.
1,500+ stations make Swap the largest battery-swapping operator built natively for Indonesia.
An exchange fast enough to remove range anxiety from the rider's decision entirely.
Partner brand SMOOT named best electric scooter in Indonesia's automotive awards.
Three rounds, capped by a US$22M Series A led by Qiming Venture Partners.
It operates a battery-swapping network for electric motorcycles in Indonesia, letting riders exchange a depleted portable battery for a full one in about nine seconds, and it sells its own SMOOT electric motorcycles.
Roughly nine seconds at a swap station - faster than refueling a petrol tank.
It was founded in 2019 by Irwan Tjahaja (CEO), Kevin Phang and Martin Zhuang.
About US$29.2M total, including a US$22M Series A in January 2024 led by Qiming Venture Partners, with GGV Capital and Ondine Capital participating.
At 1,500+ stations across cities like Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung and Bali, often inside Circle K and Alfamart stores and other high-traffic spots.
Sources: swap.id · Indonesia Business Post · AsiaTechDaily · New Energy Nexus · Crunchbase · Tracxn · PR Newswire APAC. Figures are approximate and drawn from public reporting.