A Cyprus-based company, NeoFleet Capital, has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding to help taxi and ride-hailing fleet operators in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire put more cars on the road. The funding round, announced on October 8, 2026, mixes equity and debt, and was backed by Mark Loughran, the former president and chief financial officer of global ride-hailing giant inDrive, along with other private investors. Loughran has also joined the company as president and co-founder.
NeoFleet is tackling a problem that will sound painfully familiar in West Africa. Drivers want to work and passengers need rides, but the money to buy the cars simply is not there. Banks in the region are often unwilling to lend to taxi fleet operators because they lack the credit models and risk appetite to finance what they see as a messy, fragmented business. Vehicles in Sub-Saharan Africa also cost about 8% more than the global average, making the financing gap even wider.
Treating Taxis as a Valuable Asset
NeoFleet’s approach involves lending directly to individual drivers, the company finances professional taxi and ride-hailing fleet operators. It combines vehicle financing with fleet management technology, operations and maintenance, and insurance into what it calls a “Fleet Management Franchise” model.
In practice, this means NeoFleet does not use one ownership model everywhere. In some deals, it provides secured financing to an established fleet operator, which then buys and owns the vehicles. In others, NeoFleet buys the cars itself and rents them to local operators. It also uses instalment-sale structures, where operators acquire vehicles and pay over an agreed period.
The company says it built its business around a financing gap where banks often lack the credit models and risk appetite to finance taxi fleets, leaving professional operators with limited access to capital for expansion. “NeoFleet bridges that gap: we provide professional fleet operators with capital to grow and create the infrastructure that allows institutional capital to access the taxi asset class at scale,” said Igor Shiyanov, NeoFleet’s chief executive officer.
Where the Money Goes
NeoFleet currently operates in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Peru. As of October 2026, its network includes about 650 vehicles with an approximate purchase value of $10 million. The company started the year with only around 25 vehicles and is on track for roughly 1,000 by the end of 2026. The $4 million will finance the expansion of its existing operations and entry into new mobility markets across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
By the end of 2027, NeoFleet aims to support approximately 5,000 vehicles across its network, which it estimates would represent between $75 million and $100 million in vehicle value. In Côte d’Ivoire specifically, the company’s launch began with three transactions co-financing taxis worth about $3 million in total, and it wants to pass 1,000 vehicles in the country soon.
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Lifting Taxi Drivers Out of Poverty
NeoFleet’s stated mission is “Lifting drivers out of poverty, one car at a time”. In many African cities, a car is not just a car. It is a productive asset that can generate daily income for a driver and their family. When drivers cannot access vehicle finance, they are stuck renting cars from others, paying daily fees that eat into their earnings and keep them from building wealth.
Loughran also pointed to a larger opportunity. “Enormous pools of institutional capital are looking for attractive, asset-backed returns but have no scalable way of reaching these fragmented markets,” he said. “NeoFleet is building the infrastructure that bridges that gap”. In other words, pension funds and other big investors want to put money into African mobility because it produces steady returns, but they have no easy way to do it. NeoFleet is building the plumbing that connects them to local fleet operators.
A Market Worth Half a Trillion Dollars
NeoFleet estimates the global mobility fleet asset class at over $500 billion today. Professional fleet operators currently manage an estimated 20% to 30% of the world’s taxis. The company believes the shift toward autonomous vehicles could drive that share close to 100%, because even without a driver, someone still needs to finance, insure, clean, charge, maintain, and repair each vehicle.
Goldman Sachs Research forecasts that the global commercial robotaxi market alone could reach roughly $415 billion by 2035, with a fleet of around six million vehicles. NeoFleet wants to be the company that manages the money and infrastructure behind those fleets, whether the cars are driven by humans or machines.
Not Alone in the Race
NeoFleet is not the only player trying to solve vehicle financing in Francophone West Africa. Gozem, a ride-hailing and mobility platform, has raised $30 million for vehicle financing and expansion in the region. Kai, founded in Senegal in 2018, built a scheme that lets private owners and institutional investors buy cars as assets and earn regular repayments with interest. What sets NeoFleet apart is its focus on fleet operators rather than individual drivers, and its ambition to build a technology layer that scores drivers, monitors vehicles, and manages payments in real time.
What Comes Next
The company says it is looking for the next round of equity and debt investors to help scale the next phase. For now, the focus is on execution: proving that its model of combining financing, fleet management, and software can work repeatably across different countries and operators. The taxi business in Africa is fragmented, informal, and often invisible to traditional lenders. NeoFleet’s bet is that by making it more organised and data-driven, it can unlock capital that has been sitting on the sidelines—and put more cars, and more income, into the hands of African drivers.
