Naran, a UAE-based mobility financing and fleet management company, has raised $10 million in a combination of equity and debt financing from Emirati investment firm Landel. The funding will support the expansion of the company’s fleets in Colombia, Peru, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, alongside entry into new markets, including the Middle East and North Africa, and the launch of new fintech products.
Naran was founded in 2025 by Baiaskhalan Alekseev and Alexander Gubarev, both Yango alumni, where they launched and expanded ride-hailing operations through mobility applications in Latin America and Africa. Naran provides lease-to-own financing for cars and motorcycles, enabling independent ride-hailing and delivery drivers to access vehicles through repayment terms ranging from 12 to 60 months.
Financing vehicles and connecting them to mobility platforms
Naran purchases vehicles directly from manufacturers and works with major ride-hailing and delivery platforms, including Yango and inDrive, to enable drivers who have difficulty accessing traditional banking services to work with financed vehicles.
The company operates through a unified in-house technology system that covers driver registration, payment scheduling, usage-rate monitoring, telematics, and maintenance. Naran believes that relying on a technology platform and a consistent operating model helps it expand across multiple geographic markets.
According to the company, the vehicle’s importance extends beyond providing a means of work; each repayment contract builds an initial formal credit history for the driver. Naran aims to use repayment and physical-asset data as the foundation for developing an asset-backed financing platform in emerging markets, with the possibility of expanding its products beyond vehicle financing in the future.
Expanding to serve fleet operators
Naran plans to make its technology available to third-party fleet operators in the markets where it operates by offering fleet-management software and internal automation tools as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. It also intends to provide asset-backed debt financing for fleet expansion, with the possibility of acquiring operators when the economics justify it, according to the announcement.
The company currently operates in Colombia, Peru, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, and plans to launch operations in Paraguay in September 2026. Baiaskhalan Alekseev, Naran’s CEO and co-founder, said the company aims to address a financing gap that prevents ride-hailing and delivery drivers from obtaining bank loans because of irregular income or limited credit histories.
Alekseev added that every vehicle financed by Naran represents a new active driver on its partners’ platforms, while fleet-usage data enables information sharing with those platforms to maximize operating hours. The company is open to forming vehicle-provision partnerships with ride-hailing and delivery platforms entering or expanding their presence in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa.
Growth targets through 2030
The company’s market proposition is based on financing challenges and informal employment in emerging markets. It notes that approximately 88% of employment in sub-Saharan Africa is informal, limiting access to financing for vehicles and work. It also states that mobility restrictions in cities such as Abidjan may reduce national income by between 4% and 5%, while drivers in Africa may earn up to 130% more than workers in jobs requiring similar skills, according to Oliver Wyman.
By 2030, Naran aims to operate in 10 countries, provide 30,000 income opportunities, and deploy fleets comprising 10,000 cars and 20,000 motorcycles. Aydar Mussin, managing partner at Landel, said Naran’s model combines vehicle-backed assets tracked through GPS with daily cash flows, with infrastructure that can be scaled to manage fleets beyond the company’s own fleet.