YoLa Fresh, the Moroccan agritech start-up that sought to digitise the country’s fragmented fresh produce supply chain, has ceased operations after failing to secure the financing needed to sustain its development, its two co-founders confirmed.
Larbi Alaoui Belrhiti and Youssef Mamou confirmed that “YoLa Fresh has ceased its activities, having been unable to raise the necessary financing to pursue its development.” The company and its shareholders are currently working with their advisers to determine the modalities of what comes next, the founders said, declining to provide further detail at this stage.
The closure, first signalled by information circulating on LinkedIn, marks the end of one of Morocco’s most closely watched agritech ventures, less than three years after its launch.
A disputed funding tally
A figure of $20mn has circulated as an estimate of the total funds invested in YoLa Fresh. The co-founders rejected that number outright. “The $20mn figure that is circulating is inaccurate,” Alaoui Belrhiti said, adding that “the amounts publicly announced during previous fundraising rounds remain the reference.”
Public sources record two funding operations. The first, worth $2mn, was completed in March 2023. The second came in May 2024, when the company announced a $7mn pre-Series A round led by Al Mada Ventures, with participation from Algebra Ventures, E3 Capital, Janngo Capital and FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank. On the basis of available data, total disclosed funding stands at $9mn — though this figure does not capture the full quantum of investment committed since inception, nor any undisclosed financing or capital contributions.
Publicly available financial data offer only a partial picture of the company’s trajectory. Revenue of MAD 22mn was recorded for 2023, according to the available filings.
A model built for a fragmented market
Founded in 2023 by Mamou, a former general manager of Uber’s Careem and head of the Moroccan start-up incubator 212 Founders, and Alaoui Belrhiti, previously chief executive of Jumia Morocco, YoLa Fresh set out to connect smallholder farmers directly with traditional retailers and food service professionals. The platform used data analytics and artificial intelligence to track produce from farm to retail, enabling retailers to place orders by midnight for early morning delivery.
The founders drew inspiration from international fresh produce marketplace models such as Meicai in China, Frubana in Latin America and Waycool in India.
The ambition was substantial. Morocco’s agricultural supply chain is characterised by multiple intermediaries, limited digitisation and significant post-harvest losses, which the Competition Council has estimated at between 20 per cent and 40 per cent for fruit and vegetables. Traditional retail accounts for roughly 80 per cent of food sales and 99 per cent of points of sale nationwide. Smallholders cultivating less than five hectares make up the overwhelming majority of producers, and the sector contributes between 13 and 14 per cent of GDP while employing around 40 per cent of the workforce.
YoLa Fresh claimed to work with over 1,000 local retailers and to have reached a monthly gross merchandise volume of approximately $1mn. It reported an 85 per cent customer retention rate and a 20 per cent take rate, with plans to reduce food waste from 6–7 per cent towards 3 per cent by 2026.
Al Mada’s controlling stake
The $7mn round was followed by a significant structural development. In 2024, Morocco’s Competition Council approved Al Mada Ventures’ acquisition of a controlling interest in YoLa Fresh. The review was conducted under the council’s mandate to ensure competitive practices in Morocco’s fresh produce market, notwithstanding that YoLa Fresh is registered as a US-based entity with operations localised in Morocco.
At the time of the investment, Omar Laalej, managing director of Al Mada Ventures, said the agriculture sector “stands to gain from tech-enabled solutions” and described YoLa Fresh as well placed to offer “real added value to its customers, while having a positive impact on the entire ecosystem”. Al Mada Ventures is the venture capital arm of Al Mada, the Moroccan royal family’s holding company, and has a dedicated agribusiness subsidiary, Teralys, focused on food self-sufficiency and regional industrial integration.
A difficult funding environment
The closure comes amid a pronounced deterioration in financing conditions for Moroccan start-ups. In 2025, the total funding landscape in North Africa saw a widening chasm. While Morocco reached a respectable $128.4m in total funding, a closer look at local participation reveals a deeper issue. Moroccan startups raised roughly $40m from local investors across 11 disclosed deals in 2025. In contrast, Egyptian startups raised north of $200m from local investors across 40-plus deals (contributing to a total national haul of $430m).
The Moroccan ecosystem has seed capital. Al Mada Ventures, UM6P Ventures, Witamax, First Circle Capital, and Azur can all write $500k–$2m checks for early-stage companies. But the follow-on financing gap between seed ($1–$2m) and international Series A ($10m+) creates a valley of death.
From Launch Base Africa’s 2025 data, Egyptian founders can raise $1.5m seed from local investors, grow for 18 months, then raise $5–$8m Series A from the same investors or their networks. The capital compounds within the ecosystem. Moroccan founders raise $1.5m seed locally, grow for 18 months, then discover no local investor can lead their Series A. They either raise from foreign VCs (dilutive, often requiring board control) or extend their seed capital and slow growth. YoLa Fresh, according to the last publicly disclosed round, stopped at the $7m pre-Series A round.
The regional picture is starker still. In December 2025, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates captured more than 95 per cent of all capital raised in the Middle East and North Africa, while Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait and Bahrain collectively raised just $7.5mn. “Large funding rounds remain concentrated in a few markets, leaving emerging ecosystems like Morocco undercapitalised,” the Wamda report noted.
YoLa Fresh’s difficulties are not unique among agritech ventures. Globally, 2025 saw a wave of agritech shutdowns across North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, with a white paper from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln identifying a “Cost-Adoption Mismatch Effect,” in which the capital and operational burden of a technology exceeds farmers’ capacity to adopt it, even when technical performance is validated. In Africa, Kenya’s Twiga Foods announced entering into adminstration in August this year after raising more than $180mn, while South Africa’s Inseco ceased operations and sold its assets.
What comes next
The founders’ statement that the company and its shareholders are “defining the modalities of what comes next with their advisers” leaves open the possibility of an asset sale, a restructuring, or an orderly wind-down. No timeline has been provided.
For Morocco’s agritech sector, the closure represents a setback to a segment that had attracted growing investor interest on the back of food security imperatives, price pressures and the rapid digitisation of small and medium-sized enterprises. Whether the capital that backed YoLa Fresh — and the operational lessons from its attempt to modernise a deeply traditional supply chain — can be redeployed into the next generation of ventures remains an open question.