Zeno makes two senior appointments, both on the charging side. We read it as a strategic shift away from swapping as the African wars get hotter.
The News
A few hours back, Zeno announced on its LinkedIn page that Jorn van de Ven has joined the company as Vice President of Energy Operations. Also, Jaser Faruq has joined the Zeno board as an independent director.
Before joining Zeno, Van de Ven spent eight years at Tesla building and then leading the global Supercharger business. This included site development and deployment, network planning, operations across the US, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. At Zeno, he will lead the company’s network expansion across African markets “and beyond.”
The “and beyond” is relevant, and we will come to that.
Meanwhile, Faruq is currently Chief Product Officer at ChargePoint, the second largest charging network in North America. There is no indication that he will quit his day job. Like Michael Spencer (CEO, Zeno) and Van de Ven, Jaser is also a Tesla alumnus. In fact, Michael Spencer (CEO, Zeno), on a recent MCJ podcast (1. Excellent podcast; 2. They invested in Zeno), stated that they now have six Tesla alumni in Zeno.
Tesla never swapped.
You know where this is going.
So: A Supercharger operator and the ChargePoint product chief have joined Zeno’s leadership team. Neither carries a swap network on their CV. For a company that has spent two years describing itself as multimodal — battery swap, public fast charge, home slow charge — recruiting exclusively from the charge side is not a neutral act. You hire the people who have built the thing you intend to build.
Swapping stands in a corner, sulking.
The Arithmetic
Zeno closed a USD 25 million Series A in March 2026, led by Congruent Ventures. USD 4.5 million of it was a debt facility from Camber Road and Trifecta Capital, the remaining USD 20.5 million being equity. The seed round was USD 9.5 million raised way back in 2024. A lot of that would have already been spent in setting up the 175 charge point locations across five cities in Kenya and Uganda, growing at 4-8 a week. The press note mentions that, understandable because both Van de Ven and Jaser come from a charging background.
USD 25 million is not enough of a war chest to fund two energy architectures. Swap is the more capital-hungry of the pair, because you finance the packs as well as the posts. Every battery resting in a cabinet is inventory you own, insure, and swallow the depreciation. Charging lets the customer’s battery do the storing, and the customer’s balance sheet do the carrying.
This also explains that while the press note is quite absolute about the charge points count, it makes no mention of the swap stations, nor does it provide any count of them. Companies publish the metrics that they want to work on.
The Strategic Shift Cannot be Missed
Zeno is making a strategic shift to charging. Riding two boats was worth it till the story made sense to investors. Multi-modal looked good on the pitch deck during the seed round. The Series A raise was painfully long, and the appetite of North American private money for e-mobility is low, as the AI FOMO has consumed everything. The USD 25 million raise has to be savored, and growth has to be careful, not just fast.
Then there is Spiro. The Big Daddy of e-mobility in Africa has danced all around June, raising USD 270 million. This funding round, in isolation, is 9X Zeno’s lifetime raise. The irony of magnitude is not lost. The good thing is that Spiro is only swapping as of now. With the capital at the market leader’s disposal, it is foolish for anyone to take them on directly. So if Zeno is moving out of the way in that area, it’s a wise move.
Mind you, that is theoretical at best. Both play in the same market, target the same Bodas, both sell motorcycles, and trade energy. They are rivals, keeping the paraphernalia of business cases aside. For Zeno, the strategic shift is important to make money last longer.
Spiro, and its media frenzy all through June, may also be the reason why the Zeno press note, which carries a June date, has only been released post mid-July.
Zeno’s focus on fast charging puts it squarely against Roam. The Filip Lövström-led company recently announced its new packs that charge through Type 6 and charge at a 2kW rate. Type 6 is also what Zeno uses. Eerily enough, the Zeno Emara and Roam Air are also the only two motorcycles in Africa with low contribution from the Chinese supply chain.
That is not essentially a positive.
The India Read
Faruq is originally from India, with a track record spanning South Asian markets. He joins Anand Shah, already an independent director — formerly a senior innovation executive at BMW, and now a partner at The Asia Group. But more than what is visible in Shah’s CV, it is the invisible part that is important. He was one of the three advisors appointed to the Indian PM CARES Fund, a high-profile engagement by any count. He has also been a co-founder at Ola Electric, where he was mostly behind the scenes and not visible in the operations. He’s also been an advisor to WhatsApp India on the policy side. Peel the layers, and Shah is probably one of the most prolific policy influencers in India.
A board carrying two India-connected directors, one of them among the country’s more effective EV policy operators, is not assembled to sell motorcycles in Nairobi. In India, the charge-led playbook is the defensible one: swap standards remain contested, the interoperability question is unresolved, and the policy scaffolding has consistently favoured charging buildout. The retail market is almost entirely charging, and it’s only the B2B market that is swapping. Honda tried swapping in retail, and it’s still licking its wounds.
Zeno always had India on its roadmap. More than a year ago, it had launched the Emara to the media and even did some test rides. After that, nothing happened.
The problem is that Zeno is still underfunded for a market like India. Even for a fighting chance, it needs many X more money. India is also not Africa – the entrenched players are some of the most capable two-wheeler manufacturers in the world with decades of experience in making high-quality, cost-optimal machines.
Even with more funding, things may not get easy, as any investor would like Zeno to focus on one market. Africa is as lucrative as India, if not more. The operations playbook is more suitable for Africa – Zeno still outsources production, trading long-term capability building for short-term CAPEX conservation.