The startup Yassir announces that it has closed $ 30 million in Series A. The funds were raised from several investors, including WndrCo, DN Capital, DX Ventures (the investment subsidiary of Delivery Hero), Kismet Capital, Spike (Stanford Alumni ) Ventures and Quiet Capital. Endeavor Catalyst (Endeavor co-investment fund), FJ Labs, Venture Souq, Nellore Capital, Moving Capital (AKA the Uber Alumni Investment Club) and others also participated.
Notable angel investors include Cleo Sham, former COO of 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 vice -President of Spotify and Revolut.
Most of the existing investors also participated.
Yassir had previously raised $ 13.25 million in an undisclosed fundraiser in which Y Combinator was involved. Y Combinator is the world’s largest accelerator that has previously invested in AirBnB, Stripe, Dropbox, Doordash and others.
This fundraising also saw the participation of DN Capital, FJ Labs, Unpopular VC, the companies P1, French Partners, the companies Spike (Stanford Alumni), ACE & Company and Venture Souq.
Notable individual investors in this round include Max Mullen, co-founder of Instacart, Sizhao Yang, founder of Farmville, Alan Rutledge founder of TrendMD, Alber Ni, former head of engineering and recruiting at Dropbox, Samvit Ramadurgam , Founder of Forge, Julian Shapiro, Founder of Demand Curve, Greg Isenberg, Founder of 5by and Islands, Cleo Sham, Rohan Monga and Hannes Graah, among others.
Launched in 2017, Yassir quickly found a place in the Maghreb market (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). Used by more than 3 million users, Yassir offers on-demand services such as transportation and home delivery of meals and food. The startup has more than 40,000 partners, including drivers, delivery people, traders, FMCGs and wholesalers.
Yassir’s goal is to provide payment services to its users, in a region where a large majority of customers and merchants remain unbanked and / or rarely use payment services.
Yassir co-founder Noureddine Tayebi explained how this funding will allow the company to strategically invest in its growth.
“First of all, I would like to thank all of our investors for their trust, partnership and support, as well as for believing in our mission. The latter have extensive experience in supporting large companies. We will use these funds to (1) triple the size of our engineering team to meet our product ambitions, (2) consolidate our growth in existing markets through current and new products, and (3) launch in new markets, mainly in the countries of Saharan Africa, but also in other strategic geographic areas.
Anthony Saleh, Partner at WndrCo, said, “Yassir is kind of a natural business evolution that has been seen elsewhere. By the time we met the team, we saw an opportunity to access a huge market with service taking the best of the models we’ve seen elsewhere. We are delighted to be part of this remarkable project. ”
Noureddine, a Stanford Ph.D. with over 10 years of entrepreneurial experience in Silicon Valley, also commented on the company’s mission.
“Yassir is not just a business for me. It was founded with a quadruple mission. First, we want to create a 100% local tech startup success model that will be emulated by others and more by members of the Yassir team. Secondly, we want to support local talents and especially technical talents who often leave the region, mainly to Europe, to pursue studies or find a job. In fact, we recruit engineers in each country where we operate to expand this mission. We also want to make life easier for people, hence the name Yassir which means easy in Arabic. We also want to instill social values through our products, such as trust and mutual aid. ”
Yassir has experienced significant growth since its inception, leveraging its knowledge of the region and its culture.
Thomas Rubben, Partner at DN Capital, one of Yassir’s early funders, said: “There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building apps for consumers, they require local knowledge and customization. This is how Grab and Gojek built such great companies in Southeast Asia. Yassir has incorporated this and has experienced unprecedented growth becoming the leading transportation and delivery super-app in North Africa. ”
In July 2021, Noureddine joined the Endeavor network, the largest entrepreneurial community that supports high impact entrepreneurs around the world. Six months later, Yassir was selected as “Endeavor Outlier”, the company has achieved exceptional growth.
Walid Bellagha, Managing Director of Endeavor in the Maghreb region said:
“When Noureddine was going through the Endeavor selection process, we had the belief that Yassir’s performance was going to be exceptional, but it really exceeded our expectations when Yassir joined the Endeavor Outliers group, less than a year after the selection, as one of the most successful globally. This step will further unleash Yassir’s potential! ”
Endeavor Catalyst, Endeavor’s co-investment fund, which invests exclusively in businesses run by Endeavor entrepreneurs and has already supported 29 unicorns around the world, also participated in the fundraiser.
Yassir has already started expanding into new markets with a primary focus on West Africa as the next step.
