Noureddine Tayebi, the Algerian start-up who wants to “snowball” in Africa

A year after having succeeded in raising more than 67 million dollars from venture capital funds, Noureddine Tayebi has returned the cover. At the beginning of November, the co-founder of Yassir, a mobile application that provides transport and home delivery services, closed a new funding round, allowing him to collect around 150 million euros intended to finance the development of the platform and its expansion in Africa.

The 45-year-old Algerian entrepreneur, who launched the application in 2017 with a starting capital of $10,000, thus finds himself at the head of the “Most valuable start-up in North Africa”, according to the statement released by his company on November 7. A meteoric rise for this engineer who discovered an entrepreneurial spirit late in life.

In the 1990s, Noureddine Tayebi, the son of doctors born in Algiers, was encouraged by his family to apply for a scholarship to American universities, while his classmates from the Polytechnic School of Algiers prepared to integrate French engineering schools. He landed on the benches of Stanford, a prestigious university on the west coast.

With his doctorate in hand, this statistics enthusiast joined the research and development laboratory of Intel in 2006, then the world’s number one manufacturer of processors. There, he develops DNA sequencing technology with the aim of creating precision medicine solutions. “The department was structured like a start-up accelerator. I acquired skills in research and development, product management, marketing and commercialization »remembers Noureddine Tayebi.

Create a “virtuous circle”

After eight years at Intel, he resigned and launched InSense at the age of 37, a company specializing in motion nanosensors, which he sold in 2018 to Mojo Vision, a Silicon Valley company known for producing connected lenses. The amount of the sale has not been made public.

From his Californian offices, the Algerian entrepreneur, who accompanies in parallel with his activities young Maghreb shoots, then decides to invest more in the high-tech sphere in North Africa, still embryonic. Purpose : “Become the local champion and snowball” by copying the model that has proven itself in emerging countries:

“Entrepreneurial ecosystems in Asia and South America have matured thanks to local champions like Baidu and Tencent in China, Grab and Gojek in Southeast Asia or Nubank in Brazil, who have created a more- value and could help other actors to succeed in their turn. A virtuous circle is thus set up. Mutual aid between entrepreneurs has an impact on the environment in which they are. »

Inspired by the journey of Reed Hastingss, the co-founder of Netflix, Noureddine Tayebi also wants to upset uses by attacking a hitherto virgin market: on-demand transport service, in order to make up for the lack of public transport. in major Algerian cities. Yassir is born. Like other VTC applications (transport car with driver), the platform, nicknamed “the Algerian Uber”, is paid for when it is launched by taking a commission on each trip. The percentage charged depends “the driver’s performance and experience”.

“They thought I was crazy. They tried to dissuade me. I was told it would never work, “says the former engineer

The success is almost immediate. Its co-founder is expanding the range of products and opening up to e-commerce by launching at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic Yassir Express, a meal delivery and home shopping service. “They thought I was crazy. They tried to dissuade me. I was told it would never work”confides the former engineer, who regrets a lack of risk-taking among aspiring North African entrepreneurs:

“It is often said that the problem is bureaucracy. But this is not true. The real problem is that they are not ambitious enough. They don’t dare to challenge the limits of what is possible enough. »

Over 5 million users

Punchword, a social network that allows users to share quotes and words “inspiring” with their friends, is the latest start-up to enter its investment portfolio. “He advised me to think from the start of the project with an international vision and not to limit myself to local markets”says Mohamed Skander, co-founder of the application, whose beta version already has nearly 300,000 downloads: “For him, you shouldn’t be afraid to compete with the heavyweights of the industry, nothing is set in stone. And his success proves it. »

With this new fundraiser, Yassir, which employs 300 engineers in charge of development, continues to grow despite the entry into the market of several competitors such as the French Heetch or the Algerian TemTem. Today, the application is present in eight countries (Algeria, Germany, Canada, Ivory Coast, France, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia) and 45 cities, where it has more than 5 million users. Yassir, whose turnover is not disclosed, claims 80% of the on-demand transport market in the Maghreb. On its roadmap, the big English-speaking markets of the continent such as South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt.

Unlike Uber, Yassir aims to develop its own e-payment platform, a kind of Algerian PayPal, to bring together three activities in the medium term: on-demand transport, home delivery and an electronic payment service. . Because behind the attractive products already on the market hides its other challenge: digitizing means of payment in North Africa, in order to create an environment conducive to the birth of new local applications.