Why Yassir, a super-app, bought Kawarizmi and what becoming a full-stack media player unlocks

Since its launch in 2017, Yassir has built its business on an app for on-demand daily services. Its main services include ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery through Yassir Express, and financial services through Yassir Cash. Now the North African startup wants to expand into media and advertising. To do this, it has acquired programmatic advertising agency Kawarizmi.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Under the deal, Kawarizmi will continue to operate as an independent unit within the Yassir group while expanding across Africa, MENA, and diaspora audiences. The acquisition follows Kawarizmi’s own expansion, where it opened two new offices in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. Joining Yassir gives Kawarizmi a path to grow without the friction of independent regional expansion or the challenge of acquiring clients and licences across fragmented regulatory systems.

For Yassir, owning the advertising infrastructure means building a closed-loop retail media network similar to what Amazon Advertising or Instacart Ads built in Western markets. It also means controlling first-party data from payments, ride-hailing, and delivery, and the programmatic infrastructure to monetize it. Yassir moves from being an app publisher to a full-stack media player.

Noureddine Tayebi, Founder and CEO of Yassir, framed it as a structural bet: “Advertising and retail media are strategic pillars for Yassir’s next phase of growth. This partnership enables us to create a powerful bridge between brands and millions of consumers across EMEA and beyond.”

In 2019, Amazon similarly acquired Sizmek’s ad server and DSP assets, combining first-party transaction data with programmatic buying capabilities to close the loop between ad exposure and purchase behavior. Grab, the Southeast Asian super-app, built GrabAds in-house by layering advertising on top of its ride-hailing and payments data to target underserved emerging market consumers.

An infrastructure play

The acquisition is a vertical integration of data and advertising within the African market. Yassir is evolving from a payments and on-demand service platform into a media provider, absorbing Kawarizmi’s programmatic capabilities to build a retail media and advertising ecosystem within a single product.

The result puts pressure on local media agencies and trading desks operating across Europe, MENA, and Africa. Kawarizmi’s diaspora targeting capability is now backed by Yassir’s consumer transaction data. Fragmented connectivity and payment infrastructure remain real challenges in these markets, but Yassir’s existing payments infrastructure gives it a way to work around them.

Hakim Hattou, Founder and CEO of Kawarizmi, described the deal as an alignment of intent: “Kawarizmi was built to bridge brands with high-growth audiences across Africa, MENA and diasporas worldwide. Joining Yassir allows us to scale that ambition exponentially, combining media excellence with one of the most powerful consumer ecosystems in emerging markets.”

At the time of the deal, Kawarizmi had a portfolio of 76 clients. Yassir had over 8 million users across its operational markets. The combined data pool, estimated at roughly 100 billion data points, covers a segment of the population that traditional ad agencies have largely missed.

The advertising market opportunity

For brands targeting EMEA and diaspora audiences, this deal creates a more direct, data-backed path to consumers in Algeria, Morocco, and beyond, audiences that are hard to target on platforms like Meta or Google due to limited local data infrastructure. Brands that have struggled with attribution in these markets now have an alternative with real behavioral signals behind it.

Digital ad spend in the region is projected to reach $11.6 billion by 2026 and $18.5 billion by 2029. Total media spend is expected to hit $20.6 billion by 2028. Retail media is one of the fastest-growing channels, projected to grow 18.1% to $434 million in 2025.

The Kawarizmi acquisition is not Yassir’s only move in this direction. In March 2026, Yassir also acquired Uno hypermarkets from the Cevital Group, extending its super-app model into physical retail.

Last updated: March 13, 2026