An electric motorcycle startup has raised $1.2 million in a seed round that was led by Indus Valley Capital, it announced on Tuesday, Business Recorder reported.

“Zyp achieves this through an indigenously-developed product portfolio that includes purpose-built electric motorcycles, innovative battery swap stations, proprietary and patent pending battery architecture, cloud software and mobile apps,” it said in a statement.

Zyp Technologies’s assembly plant is based in Lahore where it has the capacity to produce 8,000 electric motorcycles a year. Its energy division, through which it provides battery-as-a-service (BaaS), is based in Islamabad.

The startup has two business lines: motorcycles and battery service. It wants to address the issues of high upfront cost, range anxiety, and lengthy charging times.

“With climate change and rising fuel prices in Pakistan, the urgency to electrify transportation has never been greater. Zyp’s solutions enable motorcycle fleet operators to save up to 70% on fuel costs and eliminate air polluting emissions, making their operations environmentally sustainable and profitable.”

Zyp was building one of the most important products Pakistan needed to help solve the trade imbalance and high inflation, said Aatif Awan, founding partner at Indus Valley Capital.

Hassan Khan, co-founder and CEO of Zyp Technologies, stated that the company started with an initial bootstrapped capital of $66,000 and is utilising its seed round to fund the capital expenditure incurred in the assembly plant as well as for providing the battery solutions.

“Electric batteries can be a pain-point for riders,” Khan told Business Recorder. “The battery as a service, which is offered at different tiers of subscription depending on the rider’s usage, helps solve this problem.”

Khan said replacing a battery with a charged one is equivalent to stopping for petrol at a fuel station.

The company was offering different variants of its motorcycles that range from between Rs150,000 to Rs450,000. The battery subscriptions can cost anywhere between Rs4,000 and Rs24,000.

“Cells for the battery are imported along with the motorcycle’s motor. The design frame, all body parts, and software solutions – that enable you to track the motorcycle fleet and monitor progress – are homegrown.”

The company added that its indigenously-produced charging station enables compatible motorcycles to be “refuelled within 60 seconds”.