• Algeria-based super app Yassir has raised $30 million in a Series A round led by WndrCo, DN Capital, Kismet Capital, Spike Ventures, and Quiet Capital. Endeavor Catalyst, FJ Labs, VentureSouq, Nellore Capital, Moving Capital (the Uber alumni investment club) alongside its existing investors.
• Notable angel investors include Cleo Sham, former director of operations at Uber in Europe and China, Thomas Layton, chairman of Upwork and founder of Opentable and Metaweb, Rohan Monga, former COO of Gojek and Hannes Graah, former VP of Spotify and Revolut.
• Founded in 2016 by Noureddine Tayebi and Mahdi Yettou, Yassir offers ride-hailing and parcel delivery and on-demand delivery services covering multiple verticals such as grocery, food, appliances, and cosmetics among others. 
• It operates across Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, catering to three million users with more than 40,000 partners that include drivers, delivery riders, merchants, FMCGs and wholesalers.
• The investment will be used to fuel its expansion across sub-Saharan Africa. 

Logistics and last mile delivery startups focused on facilitating streamlined online sales and e-commerce continue to pique the interest of investors; Algeria-based super app Yassir has raised $30 million for its Series A round led by WndrCo, DN Capital, Kismet Capital, Spike Ventures, and Quiet Capital. Endeavor Catalyst, FJ Labs, VentureSouq, Nellore Capital, Moving Capital (the Uber alumni investment club). Notable angel investors include Cleo Sham, former director of operations at Uber in Europe and China, Thomas Layton, chairman of Upwork and founder of Opentable and Metaweb, Rohan Monga, former COO of Gojek and Hannes Graah, former VP of Spotify and Revolut. Most existing investors also participated. The latest round comes a few months after Yassir raised $13 million in its Seed round. 

Founded in 2016 by Noureddine Tayebi and Mahdi Yettou, Yassir offers ride-hailing and parcel delivery and on-demand delivery services covering multiple verticals such as grocery, food, appliances, and cosmetics among others. Over the past couple of years, Yassir has been heavily focusing on its delivery segment; especially after its ride-hailing business was severely impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. At the onset of the crisis, Yassir extended its delivery services to 16 cities across its three key markets; Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia within the span of a month.

Yassir currently caters to three million users across its existing markets, with plans to expand to sub-Saharan markets at the beginning of next year. The ultimate goal for the Yassir platform is to offer payment services to all sides of the marketplace, in a region where a large majority of people and merchants remain unbanked and/or seldomly use payment services.

“When we first started, on-demand services that we all know about, like ride hailing, last mile delivery, home services, were pretty much virgin in those countries, and some of the countries that we want to target, when it comes to such services, they remain [untapped]," said Taybi.

Besides expansion, Yassir is also planning to hire more local tech talent. For Yassir, fostering a global mindset while continuously building a local team to address local market challenges is at the core of its business strategy and societal impact.

"We're 100 per cent a local champion, and what I mean by that is that the whole team is from the region, including the tech team, it was actually part of our mission. We want to empower the local talent and most of the technical talents," he added.