ALGERIA – Yassir, an on-demand mobility startup, has raised US$30 million for its Series A round led by A vast network of essential strategic investors.

The investors included WndrCo, DN Capital, Kismet Capital, Spike (Stanford Alumni) ventures, and Quiet Capital. Other investors included Endeavor Catalyst (Endeavor’s co-investment fund), FJ Labs, VentureSouq, Nellore Capital, Moving Capital (AKA the Uber Alumni Investment Club), and others.

The latest round comes only three months after Yassir raised $13 million in its Seed round.

Founded in 2016 by Noureddine Tayebi, 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.

The startup has over 3 million users, offers on-demand services like ride hailing and last mile delivery, and generates revenue for over 40,000 partners, including drivers, delivery riders, merchants, FMCGs, and wholesalers.

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