Algeria's homegrown startup Yassir seeks to conquer world

Algeria's homegrown startup Yassir is seeking to conquer the world of ride hailing. and home delivery service.

The start up has already made good despite the country's notoriously complex business climate. As a taxi and home-delivery firm Yassir has millions of users and is expanding across Africa.

After earning a Ph.D. at Stanford and spending most of his professional life in Silicon Valley working at various companies, CEO Noureddine Tayebi returned to Algeria to get involved in the country’s nascent tech scene to start a company and build technical talent in the Maghreb region (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia).

"The first objective is to enable local, technical talent because generally this talent doesn't have many opportunities in the region where we're operating. So most of the time, they head abroad, especially to Europe, to find other job opportunities." Tayebi says.

"The second goal, leading off from there, is to have what's called a local champion. So it's a success -- or a model of local success, if I can say so, to allow the creation of a certain dynamic and an ecosystem that could move forward." "We're very ambitious. We would like to create the biggest tech company in Africa which would be, I hope, one of the world's largest."

Yassir generates revenues by taking a commission on the services it offers. The startup provides on-demand services such as ride-hailing and last-mile delivery. It raised a $30 million Series A round capital in Nov 2021.

Wissem Lechaa, is a Customer Support employee at the Yassir Express call centre

"When I came, we were only based in Algiers, Constantine and Oran but now we're also present in Béjaïa, Oran, Constantine, Setif, Tizi-Ouzou, Blida, everywhere really."

Since launching four years ago, Yassir has seen exponential growth. In terms of traction, over 3 million people and 40,000 partners in all its markets now use the platform.