One day last November, Luis Maldonado celebrated his 50th birthday with a cake and people he considered his family around the table. A pretty normal scene, except for the setting: the office of Guajira, the start-up that gave Maldonado a loan for an e-bike that has fueled his work as a delivery worker. 

Maldonado is one of the three million Venezuelans who have settled in neighboring Colombia as the crisis in their country deepens. Venezuela faces political unrest and an acute economic crisis, and basic services like water and electricity are unreliable. 

Before moving to Bogotá six years ago, Maldonado worked as a business manager in a government role. Once he settled in Colombia, he joined the ranks of Rappi, the country’s biggest delivery platform: It has 70,000 active drivers, around 40 percent of whom are migrants. 

Riding an e-bike instead of a regular bike has multiple benefits for delivery drivers (and the planet): They can ride faster, which translates into more orders, which means more money. E-bikes produce virtually no greenhouse emissions after manufacturing. Plus, they’re less physically demanding. But the price is usually steeper and financing options are limited, so many delivery workers end up with an easier-to-get — and less eco-friendly — motorbike. 

That’s exactly what struck James Downer, an American living in Colombia. In response, in 2018 he founded Roda, an organization he calls “the lever for the energy transition of the middle class in Latin America.” After a few years and 10,000 microloans to finance vehicles for last-mile deliveries — and a pandemic that saw the delivery business boom — he started Guajira to produce Colombian-made electric bikes. Since he sold the first one in March 2023, the company has produced over 300 bikes, and 90 percent of them have gone to migrants.

He comes from a family that values conservation (his mom is a biologist), but that wasn’t his only motivation for starting Guajira. “This is something that solves people’s needs, not only something that is eco-friendly,” says Downer, a cyclist himself. “I’m in love with this product.” 

Downer says there has been a shift in how delivery workers see e-bikes. At first, there was some resistance in a city where motorbikes are far more common. At the end of 2022, there were 1,518,603 of them — that’s one for every five Bogota inhabitants. 

Yet e-bikes are actually cheaper than motorbikes in the long run. A Guajira e-bike costs 5,950,000 Colombian pesos (around $1,400). Guajira offers, through Roda, financing options for its e-bikes. Potential buyers present an ID and something that proves their income (like receipts for the app they work for). After an interview, they’re offered an option for the credit that best fits their needs in less than 48 hours. Guajira also offers a leasing option, where workers can pay a daily rate to use the bike. If they decide to buy the e-bike after this period, all the money they spent leasing it goes towards the overall cost. 

Workers can also buy a motorbike for the same amount, but they will have to pay more in taxes and the obligatory insurance — and that’s on top of refilling the tank. According to Guajira’s calculations, a delivery driver using an e-bike makes around 20 percent more​​ money, even if the gross earnings are greater on a motorbike. 

Amador Nuñez, another Venezuelan who works at Rappi, has just started riding an e-bike instead of a regular one. His first-day earnings immediately convinced him it was the right call: He had made 315,439 pesos ($73 U.S.) against 247,601 ($56 U.S.) the day before. 

Nuñez moved to Bogotá and started working with delivery apps a year ago. On a regular bike, the hills of the city were a struggle: Bogotá sits 8,660 feet above sea level, one of the highest capitals in the world. “Now I can go anywhere I want, go up any hill,” he says. “I really like this bike, it is really good.” 

Guajira is planning to expand rapidly: In the whole of 2024 they made 42 bikes, but 2025 is off to a much speedier start: The company produced 32 bikes in January alone. The team is also growing. What started as one person’s idea is now a fully functional 30-person enterprise, one that also hires immigrants. “We think having diverse perspectives is important, every culture brings something new to the table,” says Downer. In many cases, that something is the experience needed to help clients with their immigration paperwork, because the workers themselves have been through it. This is not officially part of the responsibility of the sales team, “but they do it every time they can,” Downer says. 

Fernanda Rivera, a mobility expert, knows from personal experience how a bike can change a life, especially in places with low social mobility, such as Latin America. For 12 years she worked with the Mexico City government overseeing sustainable mobility, road safety and public transportation, and for 10 of those years, she focused on bikes. 

“For immigrants, a bike is something very noble — it is a tool that helps you get out of the difficult socioeconomic circle that any person who migrates and who leaves their country in complex conditions has,” she adds.

Mexico, where over half a million people work as app-based delivery drivers, has been trying to regulate the market for years. In December of 2024, a proposed reform that would offer these workers insurance, offline time, vacation and social security was introduced. It resembles Spain’s Riders’ Law and New York City’s minimum wage for delivery drivers. 

While laws like these are replicated around the world, more organizations are springing up to help delivery drivers. One of the pioneers is Nippy, created in 2020 and now active in Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic. “What we do is act as intermediaries between delivery drivers and delivery platforms,” says Agustina Rosales, Nippy’s chief commercial officer.

The benefits that drivers registered with Nippy receive depend on the country they’re working in, but they generally include access to cheaper phone plans; financing plans for e-bikes, bikes, motorbikes and helmets; telemedicine consultations for the drivers and their families; courses on safety; and access to Nippy Centers (places where drivers can rest, charge their phones, use bathrooms or eat a snack). Importantly, Nippy makes money through partnerships with platforms and services, so it’s free for the drivers. Over 40,000 have registered so far, though not all of them are currently active.  

In Buenos Aires, where Nippy is headquartered, 70 percent of delivery drivers are immigrants, according to its data. This is one of Nippy’s pillars. “The gig economy is really important for immigrants, it helps them integrate,” Rosales says. “It is a quick option to make money.” 

Both Guajira and Nippy help immigrants without previous credit scores get financing for e-bikes and other purchases based on their work history. Nippy even allows workers to submit an application based on multiple platforms to help those who switch from working for one app to another. “That way we can build our own score that helps us estimate their payment possibilities,” Rosales says. 

Rosales is quick to add that the benefits go beyond the material ones: At a Nippy center, workers can find community: “Maybe we are not from the same place, but we already have something in common.” People meet there, she says, and end up becoming friends. 

That’s also true of Guajira, where Luis Maldonado is grateful to have found a community in which he feels accepted. And he’s helping it grow: He has already referred two people to Guajira. 

He was happy to celebrate his birthday with his e-bike community. “And I don’t even appear my age, I look 35,” he quips. “That’s because of the bike!”