Morocco’s Chari acquires Ivorian Retail startup Diago
Chari, an FMCG and financial services digital distributor targeting small retailers in Francophone Africa has acquired an Abidjan based retail app Diago.
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Morocco’s B2B E-commerce platform Chari has taken 100% stake over an Ivorian Retail app Diago. Chari is an FMCG and financial services digital distributor targeting small retailers in French-speaking Africa while Diago is an Ivorian app that connects neighborhood shops to FMCG producers/importers. Chari launched its operations in Morocco in 2020 before expanding to Tunisia in early 2022. Diago was founded in 2021 by Amidou Diarra and Ali Ouattara, and operates exclusively in Abidjan.
The African region has been very active in the VC ecosystem this year attracting investor interest and aggregating sizable amounts of capital, as seen in our Africa Q1 2022 Venture Investment Report. However, the activity isn’t just limited to raising funds, the region has also closed a notable number of Exits this year starting off strong with 11 Exits in the first quarter of the year exhibiting a 200% increase from Q1’21. The region saw some interesting trends in the Exits recorded this year including cross-border acquisitions within the African region like Nigeria’s Autochek acquiring Morocco’s KIFAL Auto, and also startups acquiring their counterparts within their borders. South Africa was a proponent of the latter trend with F&B startup UCOOK getting acquired by Silvertree Internet Holdings in a deal of $12.3M. The region also saw a whopping cross-market acquisition deal of $200M between Ghana's Peg Africa to UK’s Bboxx. To sum up all the Exit trends, the African region has traversed it all, be it cross-border, cross-market, or Exiting within its borders.
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Chari has acquired Diago, primarily, in an all-stock transaction. The companies announced that the founders Ali and Amidou will remain CEO and COO, respectively, and will oversee local business growth before expanding footprint to other Sub-Saharan countries. Cyrille Jacques, Vice-President of Chari in charge of leading international expansion said, “Diago’s entire team will receive Chari’s full support functions. Chari’s Casablanca back office will help the Diago team in setting up operations, IT tools and customer service."
After a successful proof of concept in Morocco, Chari aspires to become the leader of this business model in Francophone Africa. “The secret of a successful expansion is to build a local team that masters local market dynamics. The real challenge is to convince local entrepreneurs to join forces with Chari to grow faster. We continue to surround ourselves with young and ambitious entrepreneurs from Francophone Africa to build together a pan-African giant of FMCG and financial services distribution,” added Ismael Belkhayat, co-founder and CEO of Chari.
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