Yassir: Algerian super app raises USD 150 million

Yassir aims to provide a range of services from ride sharing to financial services and food and grocery delivery.

Yassir, a diverse marketplace platform that offers a range of services to customers, from ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery, banking and more, has announced that it has successfully raised USD 150 million in Series B funding. The funding was secured from DN Capital, Dorsal Capital, Quiet Capital, Stanford Alumni Ventures (Spike Ventures) and Y Combinator, among other strategic investors. 

Last month, Gulf Africa Review interviewed Suneel Gokhale of Venture Souq, one of the earlier investors in Yassir.

Yassir: Making lives easy

Founded in 2017 by Noureddine Tayebi and El Mahdi Yettou, Yassir has raised USD 193.25 million since its launch and is one of the most highly-valued startups in the MENA region, according to the company. The funds will be used to further its expansion across the region.

“Yassir means ‘easy’ in Arabic, and our mission as a company is to make people’s lives easy,” said Noureddine Tayebi, Founder and CEO of Yassir. “In the markets where we operate, we are already having a considerable impact on how people manage their day-to-day lives. We look forward to expanding our presence into other geographies to become the first super app to achieve mass adoption.” 

Six countries, 8 million users

Yassir operates in six countries and 45 cities and is used by over 8 million individuals. Popular across Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia and parts of French-speaking Africa, the app revolves around three core services – ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery, and financial services. The app provides its users with a single-point solution for managing all of their day-to-day activities, from travelling to work to ordering groceries and meals.

These services generate revenues for more than 100,000 partners, which include drivers, couriers, merchants, and wholesalers, among other gig workers and vendors.  

Financial services

Alongside these core services, Yassir offers financial services aimed at serving every component of the multi-sided marketplace. Much of Africa is unbanked and customers are increasingly preferring digital channels when making transactions. By providing consumers in Africa with a mobile banking solution Yassir is meeting an important need in the market, one where 50% of the population already have mobile Internet access. 

“We believe technology will foundationally re-architect consumers’ relationship with daily needs – transportation, food, financial services – not just in developed countries, but in every corner of the world,” says Daegwon Chae, general partner at BOND. “This investment is an extension of that belief in an underserved but dynamic, rapidly growing region. Emerging out of North Africa, the app has already become indispensable to users for critical aspects of their lives.”

Noureddine spent more than 15 years in Silicon Valley before returning to his homeland to build Yassir. He adds, “Yassir was founded with a threefold mission. First, we want to create a local tech startup success model which will be emulated by others and more so Yassir team members. Second, we want to empower the local talent and more importantly the technical talent which often leaves the region, mainly to Europe, to pursue further studies or find jobs. We, in fact, hire engineering talent in each country we operate in to expand that mission. And finally, we want to make the lives of our people easy while infusing social values via our products such as trust and mutual help.”