Delimobil secures up to $82M in leaseback financing from VTB

What's the deal? DelimobilDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Russia's largest car-sharing service, has secured up to 6.7 billion roubles (roughly $82M) in sale-and-leaseback financing from VTB, one of Russia's biggest state-owned banks. The deal allows Delimobil to sell part of its vehicle fleet to VTB's leasing arm and lease it back, freeing up capital while keeping cars on the road.

Why now? Russian car-sharing operators face rising vehicle costs driven by rouble volatility and limited access to new imports. Leaseback deals let asset-heavy companies like Delimobil unlock liquidity without shrinking their fleets — a critical move as competition in urban mobility intensifies.

What could go wrong? Leaseback financing shifts ownership risk but adds long-term lease obligations. If demand softens or regulatory conditions tighten, Delimobil could find itself locked into costly payments on depreciating assets it no longer owns.

The signal: Delimobil, classified by Dealroom as a late-growth-stage company, is turning to balance-sheet engineering rather than fresh equity to fund operations — a pattern increasingly common among Russian mobility firms cut off from international capital markets. The leaseback structure with a state-owned bank like VTB underscores how domestic institutional capital is stepping in where foreign investors and public markets once stood.

Read more: vedomosti.ru