Amidst the contained bustle at GITEX 2024, Ismail Chaib, General Manager of the Product & Technology Department at Yassir, sat down with Google Cloud’s Ahmed Abdelkhalek to discuss Yassir’s journey to becoming Africa’s super-app. For UAE residents, Algerian-born Yassir holds the same stature across the Red Sea as UAE’s “everything app,” Careem. Yassir, a “one-stop shop app for ride-hailing, grocery delivery, takeout, and digital payments,” is making waves in Africa while battling the universal startup obstacle of scaling up.
Yassir tied up with Google Cloud in 2017 when it debuted Algeria’s first ride-hailing app. Yassir’s entry into a historically cash-centric market exposed the African continent to the global one-tap revolution. Founder and CEO Noureddine Tayebi understood the chronic gap in the Maghreb region (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia). “Cash is king in the region not because there is no banking system, but because there was a lack of trust in what was there,” says Tayebi. “Originally, we saw it as a fintech challenge: how can we establish that trust and get people to pay digitally?”
How Yassir tackles the startup scaling conundrumÂ
Despite capturing 80% of Algeria’s mobility and quick commerce market, Chaib stresses that scaling remains a chief conundrum. According to Chaib, scaling is not as one-dimensional as “growing massively while also maintaining a semblance of equilibrium across perfection.”
The New York Stock Exchange @NYSE, the world’s largest #stockexchange, congratulated @Yassir_Global on its #SeriesB raise by displaying/announcing it on its floor! pic.twitter.com/OJuX8SMvwR
— Yassir | يسير (@Yassir_Global) November 15, 2022
To scale, direction is imperative. For Yassir, direction is often dictated by two aspects: technology and people. Adapting to revolutionary trends like the dawn of GenAI is crucial to leveling up services and their quality. At Yassir, “we’ve fully encouraged Google’s AI solutions” to address deep-sided “operational deficiencies in our business,” said Chaib. However, the unprecedented rate of technological advancement is an accepted reality in any startup economy. But to adapt swiftly and innovate, “you need to find good people.” Chaib, a tech genius today who once dabbled in rap, believes the people quotient in the startup equation is fulfilled by “someone who demonstrates a growth mindset, not necessarily by someone who’s done it before.” He continued, “[At Yassir, we need] someone who can get punched in the face, fall, wake up, smile, and carry on.”
Where AI features in Yassir’s growth storyÂ
GenAI is at the tip of every startup’s vernacular. Like its contemporaries, Yassir is also team AI to drive innovations and profits. AI can be leveraged for endless use cases, from “productivity to operational efficiency or generating a driver” on the spot. Yassir is experimenting with AI for prototyping and to assist its product managers. “With AI, you have a rudimentary prototype in a matter of minutes to showcase to customers” or investors. Chaib remarks that with “Google Cloud, we enable internal processes” that set innovations in the pipeline in motion. A possibility that was perceived as science fiction in a pre-pandemic world.
