TLG Capital has closed a $3 million senior debt facility for Drive45, a Lagos-based mobility company that supplies vehicles to local and international businesses without requiring them to own a fleet. The private credit firm, which operates exclusively across sub-Saharan Africa, structured the deal with a guarantee from Cascador, the Nigerian accelerator that took Drive45 through its ScaleUp programme in 2024, delivered in partnership with Morgan Stanley.
A Debt Bet on Corporate Mobility Demand
Founded in 2021 by Oluwaseyi Adefemi, Drive45 gives companies access to reliable transportation without the capital burden of buying and maintaining vehicles outright. It currently runs more than 170 active vehicles for corporate clients across Nigeria, a business model that sits closer to fleet leasing than to the consumer-facing ride-hailing space that dominates most headlines about African mobility.
That distinction matters. Drive45 is not chasing riders through an app; it is selling uptime and reliability to businesses that need staff and goods moved daily. The capital will go toward buying more vehicles, adding customers, and pushing into Port Harcourt, Abuja, Kano and Kaduna over the next few years, according to the company.
Isha Doshi, co-founder and partner at TLG Capital, described Drive45 as an example of disciplined capital deployment aimed at a clear market need. Oluwaseyi Adefemi, Drive45’s CEO, said the financing was structured around the company’s actual growth trajectory rather than a generic lending template, and credited Cascador for helping the business become investment-ready.
Why Debt, Not Equity
Drive45’s decision to raise debt rather than chase another equity round tracks a broader shift in how African mobility and asset-heavy startups are financing growth. Debt financing across African startups climbed to a record $1.6 billion in 2025, up 63% year-on-year, as companies with predictable cash flows and physical collateral increasingly chose borrowing over further dilution. Fleet-based businesses like Drive45 fit that pattern closely: vehicles are collateral, corporate contracts generate predictable receivables, and equity investors have grown warier of capital-intensive mobility plays after years of cash-burning ride-hailing experiments.
Nigeria’s mobility financing sector has produced several models chasing the same underlying problem — the mismatch between vehicle costs and driver or business income. Moove built its financing model around drivers who lease vehicles from ride-hailing platforms, while Drive45 targets corporate clients directly rather than gig workers. The structural guarantee from Cascador and Morgan Stanley on this deal also signals that de-risked, blended finance structures are becoming a more common route for mid-size African companies too small for a large equity cheque but too proven for unsecured commercial lending.
The Execution Risk Ahead
A $3 million facility is modest next to the nine-figure debt rounds some African mobility companies have chased in recent years, and that scale gap is the point. Drive45 is still a regional operator with a single-country footprint, and its expansion into Port Harcourt, Abuja, Kano and Kaduna will test whether its corporate leasing model travels beyond Lagos’s dense commercial base. Vehicle maintenance costs, fuel price volatility and Nigeria’s patchy road infrastructure outside major cities all weigh more heavily on a fleet business than on an asset-light software platform.
There is also concentration risk in leaning on corporate contracts: losing a handful of large clients could hit utilisation rates harder than a diversified consumer base would. How Drive45 manages fleet utilisation as it multiplies its city footprint, without over-leveraging against a debt facility it now has to service, will be the clearer test of whether TLG’s bet pays off.
What to Watch Next
TLG Capital’s deal team, led by Aum Thacker and Rohan Subramanian, will continue monitoring Drive45 on governance and operational performance as part of the financing terms. Whether Cascador’s guarantee structure with Morgan Stanley becomes a template for other growth-stage Nigerian companies seeking debt over equity is worth tracking, as is Drive45’s ability to replicate its Lagos playbook in markets with far less commercial density.
