Afridigest Week in Review: A super week for super apps

+Acquisitions and acqui-hires +The evolution of digital health, Saas, and embedded lending +A primer on the metaverse +Africa by tribal/lingusitic divides

The Afridigest Week in Review is a must-read weekly recap for Africa-focused founders, executives, and investors, as well as interested observers.

Welcome back, friends! Thanks for opening Afridigest today! This condensed newsletter covers events from Nov 28th through Dec 4th. (Week 49’s newsletter covering Dec 5th - 11th should be sent early next week.) With that said, let’s get into it.

Week 48 2021: November 28 - December 4

Credit: Seth Eckert

📰 Deal of the Week

ONE APP FOR EVERYTHING

Yassir, an Algerian ride-hailing and last-mile delivery super app platform, raised a $30M Series A from WndrCo, DN Capital, Kismet Capital, Spike Ventures, Quiet Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, FJ Labs, VentureSouq, Nellore Capital, Moving Capital, and others.

Founded four years ago, Yassir was the first Algerian startup to participate in Y Combinator and the company claims over 3 million users and 40,000 partners.

💡 Why it’s the deal of the week: It’s been interesting times recently for super apps across the globe. Grab, the Southeast Asian super app, completed its ~$40B SPAC IPO last week — the largest such deal ever; Indian super app Paytm went public with a $20B valuation a few weeks ago; Gozem, a super app targeting Francophone Africa, also announced its Series A; and influential NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway published a piece suggesting super apps are inevitable in the West. Yassir’s deal is the latest in the global super app movement, and with this round, it’s now among the most well-funded startups in the MENA region.

⛏️ Go deeper:

• Shameless plug: Read How Africa’s super app landscape is evolving and get a sense of the various super app players on the continent

• Use of funds: Yassir, which currently operates in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, will use the investment to grow in its existing MENA markets, expand to other strategic geographies like Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, and triple the size of its engineering team

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