Yassir completes a Series A funding round of $30 million

Yassir is pleased to announce the successful completion of a $30 million Series A funding round this summer.

The funds were raised from a diverse group of investors, including WndrCo, DN Capital, DX Ventures (the investment arm of Delivery Hero), Kismet Capital, Spike (Stanford Alumni) Ventures, Quiet Capital, Endeavour Catalyst (Endeavour's co-investment fund), FJ Labs, Venture Souq, Nellore Capital, Moving Capital (aka the Uber Alumni Investment Club).

Notable angel investors include Cleo Sham, former COO at Uber in Europe and China, Thomas Layton, Upwork President and founder of Opentable and Metaweb, Rohan Monga, former COO of Gojek, and Hannes Graah, former VP at Spotify and Revolut. Yassir had previously raised $13.25 million in an undisclosed seed round that included Y Combinator, the world's largest accelerator that has birthed companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Doordash, and others.

The funding round also included DN Capital, FJ Labs, Unpopular VC, P1 Ventures, French Partners, Spike (Stanford Alumni) Ventures, ACE & Company, and Venture Souq, among others.

Notable angel investors include Max Mullen, Instacart co-founder, Sizhao Yang, Farmville founder, Alan Rutledge, TrendMD founder, Alber Ni, former engineering and recruiting head at Dropbox, Samvit Ramadurgam, Forge founder, Julian Shapiro, Demand Curve founder, Greg Isenberg, 5by and Islands founder, Cleo Sham, Rohan Monga, and Hannes Graah, among others.

Launched in 2017, Yassir quickly became a trusted multi-service marketplace in the Maghreb region (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) and currently has over 3 million users.

It offers various on-demand services such as ride-hailing and delivery services, generating income for over 40,000 partners, including drivers, couriers, merchants, FMCG, and wholesalers.

Ultimately, the goal is to use this ecosystem to provide payment services to all players in this market, in a region where a large majority of customers and merchants remain unbanked or rarely use payment services. Yassir co-founder Noureddine Tayebi explained how this funding will strategically invest in the company's growth.

"Firstly, I want to thank all our investors for their trust, partnership, and support, as well as for their faith in our mission. They have vast experience in supporting great entrepreneurs and companies. We will use the funds to

• Triple the size of our engineering team to meet our product ambitions,
• Consolidate our growth in existing markets through current and new products, and
• Expand into new markets, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa but also in other strategic geographic areas."

Anthony Saleh, partner at WndrCo, said, "Yassir follows a natural evolution of companies seen elsewhere in the world. When we met the team, we saw the opportunity to enter a massive market with a service that takes the best from models we've seen elsewhere. We are excited to be part of this great journey."

Thomas Rubben, partner at DN Capital, one of Yassir's early backers, said, "There is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating consumer applications; they require local knowledge and relevant customization. This is how Grab and Gojek built such large businesses in Southeast Asia. Yassir encapsulates this truth and has shown unprecedented hyper-growth to become the leading ride-hailing and delivery super-app in North Africa."

In July 2021, Noureddine joined the Endeavour network, the largest entrepreneurial community empowering high-impact entrepreneurs worldwide. Six months later, Yassir was selected as an Endeavour Outlier, recognizing companies that have achieved exceptional growth and impact. Walid Bellagha, Managing Director of Endeavour in the Maghreb region, commented on the funding round. "When Noureddine joined the Endeavour selection process, we were convinced that Yassir was going to be an outstanding player, but he has truly exceeded our expectations by being one of the top performers globally less than a year after his selection; this new funding round will now unleash more of Yassir's potential!"

Noureddine, with a Ph.D. from Stanford and over 10 years of experience in companies and entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, returning to his native region, also commented on the company's mission.

"Yassir is not just a company for me. It was founded with a quadruple mission. Firstly, we want to create a 100% locally imitated technological startup success model. Secondly, we want to empower local talents, especially technical talents who often leave the region, mainly to Europe, for studies or employment. In fact, we hire engineers in every country where we operate to extend this mission. Then, we want to make people's lives easy. In fact, Yassir means 'easy' in Arabic! Finally, we want to instill social values through our products, such as trust and mutual aid."