- Lyon-based Flease has raised €13M in a round led by Partech Impact to scale its reconditioned-vehicle leasing platform for enterprise fleets.
- The company manages over 2,000 vehicles and is the only independent player in a French corporate fleet market of 1.3 million vehicles.
- Each vehicle Flease leases saves approximately 0.7 tonnes of CO₂ compared with a new vehicle lease, according to co-founder Constantin Eliard, who spoke to TFN ahead of today’s announcement.
France’s corporate fleet market has 1.3 million vehicles and is almost entirely controlled by subsidiaries of banks and car manufacturers. ALD is owned by Société Générale. Arval is owned by BNP Paribas. None of them was built for a mid-market company that wants a refurbished vehicle on a flexible contract, delivered quickly and managed through a digital platform.
That is the gap Lyon-based Flease has spent five years building into a business, and today it announces a €13 million Series A in funding led by Partech Impact to scale it. The round brings total funding to approximately €16 million, following earlier rounds of €500,000 and €2.5 million. TFN spoke exclusively to co-founder Constantin Eliard ahead of the announcement.
The founding story
Constantin Eliard and Vincent Dreyfus have been friends since childhood. They co-founded Flease five years ago, drawing on previous experience in the automotive industry and launching during a post-lockdown moment when fleet managers were questioning long-term commitments, and the incumbents were slow to respond.
Eliard manages the financial and purchasing side of the business. Dreyfus runs sales and operations. The company currently manages a fleet of more than 2,000 vehicles, each with an average age of one year and approximately 15,000 kilometres of use.
How it works
Flease offers contracts from one to 50 months on reconditioned vehicles, with the option to switch vehicles mid-contract and full transparency on return fees. The core product is a telematics-driven fleet management platform that tracks usage, fuel consumption, and service cycles in real time, giving fleet managers precise visibility over the total cost of ownership.
“Our platform supplies fleet managers with visibility and simplified daily operations. Our model is based on three principles: flexibility, transparency, and cutting deployment delays,” said Vincent Dreyfus, co-founder, Flease.
The incumbents have the relationships and the balance sheets. What they lack, Eliard told TFN, is digital infrastructure designed for the mid-market. That is how Flease won accounts with Pennylane, the French accounting software company, and Seris, one of France’s largest security groups, both of which ran formal evaluations before signing. Fill Up Media and Belambra Clubs are also among its clients.
The sustainability angle, with a specific number
Flease avoids the need for new vehicle production entirely. Eliard told TFN that each reconditioned vehicle the company puts on the road avoids approximately 0.7 tonnes of CO₂ compared with leasing an equivalent new vehicle. Across 2,000-plus vehicles, the cumulative saving is material and it is the kind of specific metric that impacts investors increasingly required before committing growth capital.
This is why Partech Impact led the round. The fund backs European B2B companies transforming value chains in industry, mobility, and healthcare, companies that have a proven model and are ready to scale.
“This dynamic and talented team is revolutionising the leasing landscape in France. We were impressed by the quality of execution, the clarity of vision, and the innovative nature of Flease’s offering. We look forward to supporting them as they scale into a sustainable leader in the French leasing market,” said Arnaud Minvielle and Rémi Said, general partners, Partech Impact.
What comes next
The €13 million will go toward accelerating commercial deployment and expanding capacity to serve larger fleets. Flease also raises debt financing alongside equity, a necessary structure for an asset-intensive business that must purchase vehicles before it can lease them.
On expansion, Eliard pointed to Spain, Portugal, and Italy as the markets under consideration, Southern European countries with large fleet markets and incumbents that have not built for the same digital-first mid-market segment. No timeline was given. The immediate focus is France, where the company says it is the only independent player in the category.
“We are now able to serve fleets ranging from just a few vehicles to several hundreds, without compromising on service quality or operational efficiency, and all the while maintaining that flexibility that sets us apart,” said Constantin Eliard, co-founder, Flease.
