Yassir, an Algerian on-demand transportation network, has secured a $30 million Series A fundraising round to help it expand into new regions and flourish in existing ones.
Yassir, which began as an on-demand ride-hailing platform in 2017, now provides last-mile delivery services and collaborates with over 40,000 partners across Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
WndrCo, DN Capital, Kismet Capital, Spike Ventures, and Quiet Capital were among the primary strategic investors in its $30 million Series A round, which also included Endeavor Catalyst, FJ Labs, VentureSouq, Nellore Capital, Moving Capital, and a number of renowned angel investors.
Yassir previously raised $13.25 million in an undisclosed seed round in which Y Combinator took part. Noureddine Tayebi, the startup’s co-founder, thanked all the investors and described how the money will be utilised to assist Yassir to develop.
“We will be using the funds to triple the size of our engineering team to meet our product ambitions, consolidate our growth in the existing markets via current and new products, and expand into new markets primarily in Sub-Saharan African countries but also into other strategic geographies,” he said.
“Yassir is not just a company to me. It was founded with a fourfold mission. First, we want to create a 100 percent 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.”
Yassir has already begun expanding into other regions, with an emphasis on West Africa and portions of Europe, and will debut in these areas in the coming months.
“Yassir is a natural evolution of companies seen elsewhere in the world. The moment we met the team we saw the opportunity of entering an enormous market with a service taking the best of models we have seen elsewhere. We’re thrilled to be part of this supercharged journey,” said Anthony Saleh, partner at WndrCo.
