Naran, a UAE-based mobility fintech founded in 2025, has from investment firm Landel, to expand asset-backed vehicle financing for ride-hailing and delivery drivers across Latin America and Africa.
An asset-backed model for underbanked drivers
Naran provides rent-to-own financing for cars and motorcycles, with terms ranging from 12 to 60 months, letting independent drivers access vehicles without a traditional credit history. The company buys vehicles directly from manufacturers and partners with ride-hailing and delivery platforms, including Yango and inDrive, to place underbanked drivers on the road, with each financed vehicle serving as the loan’s collateral.
“We address a critical financing gap in emerging markets, where ride-hailing and delivery drivers can’t access traditional bank loans due to irregular income or limited credit histories,” said Bayaskhalan Alexeev, CEO and co-founder.
Alexeev and co-founder Alexander Gubarev are both Yango alumni, having previously launched and scaled the platform’s ride-hailing operations across Latin America and Africa.
Aidar Musin, managing partner at Landel, described Naran as “a rare combination in emerging markets: an asset-backed business where every dollar deployed is secured by a revenue-generating, GPS-tracked vehicle.”
Where the money is going
The funding will scale Naran’s existing fleet operations in Colombia, Peru, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, and support entry into new markets including MENA. Beyond vehicle financing, Naran plans to expand into broader asset-backed financial products, a multi-fleet servicing platform for third-party fleet operators, and future credit offerings secured by real assets and repayment data rather than conventional credit scoring. By 2030, the company aims to operate across 10 countries, with fleets of 10,000 cars and 20,000 motorcycles.
Why it matters
Naran’s model, sitting between a fintech and an asset manager, is built around a specific structural gap: gig-economy drivers in emerging markets generate steady, trackable income through ride-hailing platforms, but that income rarely translates into access to conventional vehicle financing. By anchoring loans to a GPS-tracked, revenue-generating asset rather than a credit score, the company is testing whether repayment and vehicle-utilisation data can substitute for the credit history underbanked drivers don’t have.
The MENA entry specifically brings Naran’s model into a market where ride-hailing platforms are well established but vehicle-financing infrastructure for gig drivers is comparatively less developed than the company’s existing LatAm and West African markets, making this an early test of whether the model translates outside its founding regions.
What’s next
Naran hasn’t disclosed a timeline for its MENA entry, or which specific market within the region it would target first. Its progress against a 2030 target of 10,000 financed cars and 20,000 motorcycles, from what is still an early-stage fleet, is the clearer metric to track as the new funding deploys.
