Naran, a UAE-based mobility financing platform founded by two former Yango executives, has raised $10m in equity and debt from Landel to scale rent-to-own vehicle financing for ride-hailing and delivery drivers in Colombia, Peru, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire.
Founded in 2025 by Bayaskhalan Alexeev and Alexander Gubarev, who previously launched and scaled Yango ride-hailing operations across Latin America and Africa, Naran buys vehicles directly from manufacturers and finances them for independent drivers on terms of 12 to 60 months. It partners with platforms including Yango and inDrive to supply drivers, and operates its own fleet management system covering onboarding, payment scheduling, telematics and maintenance.
The company plans to open that technology to third-party fleet operators, offering fleet management software, asset-backed debt for expansion and, where the economics justify it, acquisitions. “Every vehicle we finance is an active driver added to our partners’ marketplaces,” Alexeev said.
Landel managing partner Aidar Musin said the model generated “hard collateral, daily cash flows, and proven unit economics”, adding that the fleet management infrastructure made it scalable beyond Naran’s own fleet.
The investment is the latest sign that mobility fintechs are treating Africa and Latin America as a single high-growth market. Latin America has two of the busiest Uber cities in the world, São Paulo and Mexico City, and nearly a third of the region’s population already uses ride-hailing. Africa remains earlier in the adoption curve. The African ride-hailing market size is expected to grow from USD 2.53 billion in 2025 to USD 3.25 billion by 2031.
In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 88 per cent of employment is informal, limiting access to vehicle credit. But demand is visible. According to Oliver Wyman, drivers in Africa earn up to 130 per cent more than workers in comparable-skill jobs, and the continent’s shared mobility market is expected to nearly double to about $8bn by 2030.
Naran aims by 2030 to operate in 10 countries, deploy fleets of 10,000 cars and 20,000 motorcycles, and create 30,000 income opportunities. It plans to enter Paraguay in September 2026.
The corridor is crowded. Moove, the Uber-backed Nigerian operator, has raised more than $500m and is valued at over $2bn. London-headquartered GoCab earlier this year announced a $45m round, comprising $15m in equity and $30m in debt, to expand drive-to-own financing in West Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. GoCab says its three-year model, with daily repayments deducted from digital wallets, allows drivers to earn roughly four times the local minimum wage; it targets $100m in annual recurring revenue by 2027.
Uganda-based Asaak, after reaching profitability in Uganda, acquired FlexClub’s Mexican operations in 2023, a move it says expanded its addressable market 27 times. In Mexico, where only 37 per cent of adults have bank accounts, Asaak uses the vehicle as collateral to bring drivers into a broader credit ecosystem. Kenya’s Hakki Africa, backed by Japanese investors, is taking the same logic to Thailand, with a pilot with Bolt.
The Yango connection is not incidental. Yango has been moving deeper into vehicle supply in its own markets. In September 2025 it launched Yango Motors as an official distributor for Chinese car brands Bestune and Kaiyi in Côte d’Ivoire, with financing partnerships and after-sales support. Its $20m corporate venture arm has backed mobility startups, including Kenyan bus-booking platform BuuPass. Former Yango operators carry direct experience of the supply bottleneck: platforms can generate demand, but drivers cannot always access affordable vehicles.
The risks are substantial. The model is capital-intensive and exposed to currency depreciation, vehicle residual values, default rates and fragmented regulation. Uber’s exit from Côte d’Ivoire in September 2025 after six years underlined the difficulty of operating standardised models in local markets; local users said the service was expensive and weekly payouts did not fit drivers’ daily cash-flow needs.
Still, the underlying constraint in many of these markets is not passenger demand but vehicle supply. Naran’s bet is that former Yango operators know how to unlock that supply, and that every financed vehicle can become the first formal repayment record for a driver who has been invisible to banks.