NeoFleet Capital $4M Pre-Seed Funds Taxi Fleets and Robotaxi Bet

A small round with a big thesis

NeoFleet Capital, a fleet-finance company based in Limassol, Cyprus, has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding. It lends to professional taxi fleets in emerging markets.1 Mark Loughran, the former president and CFO of ride-hailing company inDrive, put money into the round and has joined NeoFleet as president and co-founder.1 NeoFleet was founded in 2024 by Igor Shiyanov and Oleg Mosyazh. It already operates in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Peru.3

Four million dollars is not much in today's venture market. The pitch around it is large, though. NeoFleet presents itself as more than a lender to taxi operators. It says it is building the financing and operations layer that driverless fleets will need, and it argues that this need will remain even after the driver is gone.9 So the deal covers two things that rarely show up in one pre-seed round: asset-backed lending in Africa and Latin America, and the long-running investor interest in autonomous mobility.

What the money buys

The reported numbers are mostly consistent. NeoFleet says its network has 650 vehicles worth about $10 million at purchase price as of October 2026.14 It plans to reach 1,000 vehicles by the end of 2026 and 5,000 by the end of 2027. The company puts the value of that larger fleet at $75 million to $100 million.149

That plan explains how a $4 million round can support it. The round was a mix of equity and debt.3 This is a capital-heavy business. The equity pays for the platform, and borrowed money is meant to pay for the cars. Going from roughly $10 million in vehicles to as much as $100 million in about 15 months means NeoFleet will need far more outside credit than this round provides. In practice, the pre-seed shows whether the company can run its model. It does not pay for the fleet.

NeoFleet says it is looking at more than 15 countries and will pick two or three new markets. Its targets are Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.3 Further out, it has named the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union as possible markets, while it keeps growing in its three current countries.14

Where the reporting diverges

Outlets described the round in different ways, mainly on who led it. Dabafinance says DMTech VC, a fund focused on fintech and asset-backed finance, led the round along with private investors including Loughran. TechCabal says DMTech VC backed the round, without calling it the lead.14 Seedtable lists DMTech as a participant and says no lead was named.8 Dealroom's summary goes another way and says the round was led by former inDrive executives.7 The company's own press release does not mention DMTech. It credits Loughran "alongside other private investors."1

The most likely explanation is that the first announcement put Loughran forward and that DMTech's role came out in later interviews. Without a confirmed lead, the round's structure is unclear. The equity-debt split and the valuation were not disclosed.8

The amount also varies by currency. EU-Startups reported €3.5 million and converted all of the company's dollar figures into euros.11 One tracker listed about $3.8 million, apparently based on that euro figure. Most other outlets used $4 million.36 These are conversion differences, not conflicting facts, but they show how fast an unclear figure gets copied across funding databases.

The outlets agreed on more than they disagreed. Nearly all of them repeated NeoFleet's market-size claims: a global mobility fleet asset class of more than $500 billion, and professional operators running 20–30% of the world's taxis.911 These figures come from the company and were not independently checked. Readers should treat them as part of the pitch.

How the model actually works

TechCabal published the most detailed account of how the business runs. It says NeoFleet uses different ownership structures in different deals.14 In some, it gives secured loans to established operators, who buy and own the vehicles. In others, NeoFleet buys the cars and rents them to local fleet operators. It also uses instalment sales, where operators pay for vehicles over a set period.14 Revenue comes from interest, fees and rental income. NeoFleet expects to add software, maintenance and insurance revenue as its "Fleet Management Franchise" grows.14

The technology part is described as fleet and driver scoring, telematics, vehicle monitoring, maintenance management and payment control.14 If an operator stops paying, NeoFleet says it first tries to restructure the debt. If that fails, it uses its security rights and tracking data to take back the vehicle and give it to another operator.14

This is a key difference from the better-known companies in the space. NeoFleet lends to businesses that already run taxi fleets. It does not deal directly with thousands of individual drivers.3 Condia notes that Moove and Naran also act as financing layers for mobility, but with different models. Moove confirmed its unicorn valuation in August, and Naran raised $10 million.3 TechCabal and Dabafinance both name Moove and Autochek as the larger competitors.146

Lending to fleet operators instead of drivers is a sensible choice for a small team. NeoFleet assesses fewer borrowers, and each one is more established. Collection costs are lower. The trade-off is concentration risk: if one large operator defaults, many vehicles go bad at once. Repossession and redeployment, which the company leans on as protection, depend on how secondary markets and local courts work in each country.

The financing gap is real

The problem NeoFleet is addressing is not new. The company says banks in its markets often lack the credit models and the appetite for risk to lend to taxi fleets. That leaves operators with little capital to grow.14 Cars also cost more in some of these places. World Bank data from 2021 put Sub-Saharan Africa's vehicle-price index at 107.74 against a global benchmark of 100, or about 8% above average.14

Loughran describes the opportunity in two parts. On one side, drivers earn money every day from a vehicle. On the other, institutional investors want asset-backed returns but have no scalable way into fragmented local markets.1 Shiyanov told TechCabal that NeoFleet wants to give operators growth capital and also build the infrastructure that lets institutional money reach the taxi asset class at scale.14

That is the most important part of the pitch. The goal is to turn scattered taxi loans into something large funds can buy. If it works, NeoFleet becomes a marketplace connecting capital to assets as well as a lender. That is also why the team's background matters. Mosyazh runs business development and capital raising after working at Microsoft and PwC.11

The autonomous-mobility angle

The autonomous-vehicle part of the pitch is where NeoFleet connects to this year's interest in AI-driven mobility. The company cites Goldman Sachs Research, which projects that the commercial robotaxi market could reach about $415 billion by 2035, with around six million vehicles.1 NeoFleet says a driverless car still has to be financed, insured, cleaned, charged, maintained, repaired and repositioned. On that basis, it expects professional operators' share of taxis to rise from 20–30% to nearly 100% as autonomy spreads.9

The argument holds up. Robotaxis will not run themselves as businesses, and someone will have to own and maintain them. But NeoFleet's main markets are a long way from that. Shiyanov said himself that human-driven and autonomous vehicles will coexist in Africa "for some time."14 For the next few years, NeoFleet will be judged on loan performance in Dakar, Abidjan and Lima, not on robotaxis.

Our reading is that the autonomy story mostly helps the company raise money. A taxi lender in West Africa and Peru is hard to sell to venture investors. A future fleet-infrastructure platform for robotaxis is easier. That does not make the claim empty. It does mean the company should be judged on credit discipline and how fast it can grow the fleet.

What to watch

Dealroom puts the $4 million round in the 94th percentile of transportation rounds linked to Cyprus.7 That says something about Cyprus's small startup scene and also shows investors are willing to back fintech-mobility deals at a very early stage.

There are three tests ahead. First, whether NeoFleet reaches 1,000 vehicles by December, which means adding about 350 in under three months.3 Second, whether it lines up debt facilities large enough to get to 5,000 vehicles by the end of 2027.6 Third, whether loan performance holds up as it enters two or three new countries with different legal systems for taking back vehicles.14

If NeoFleet passes those tests, the robotaxi pitch will matter less, because the business will already be worth backing as an asset-backed lender. If it doesn't, the autonomous-vehicle story won't make up for it.