Sophia Alj builds Chari, digitising Africa’s informal retail sector through supply, payments, and financial services.
Sophia Alj has emerged as one of North Africa’s notable tech entrepreneurs, co-founding Chari in 2020 alongside her husband, Ismael Belkhayat (CEO), to address long-standing inefficiencies in informal retail in Africa.
Chari is a Moroccan-based B2B e-commerce and fintech platform to digitise small retailers in Africa by providing inventory, payments, and financial services like micro-loans and insurance.
Based in Morocco, the company initially set out to help neighbourhood shop owners source fast-moving consumer goods more reliably. Over time, it has evolved into a digital platform offering both logistics and financial services to small retailers across Francophone African countries.
Alj’s background provides clear insight into her approach. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering from McGill University and a Master’s in Management from ESCP Europe, and she spent several years as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company.
Her experience across African markets exposed her to supply-chain constraints and the limited access many shopkeepers have to credit, banking tools, and dependable distributors. These observations influenced her decision to step into entrepreneurship.
Before launching Chari, Sophie Alj co-founded Mondentiste.ma, an online dental service, and became a managing partner at Wib.co, a Casablanca-based startup studio. These earlier projects helped shape her understanding of building scalable digital products in underserved sectors.
Launching Chari
Chari was founded at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the fragility of retail supply chains. The platform offered small shops, commonly family-run businesses, a way to order goods digitally and receive them within a short delivery window, which addresses stockouts and sourcing difficulties that were further amplified by lockdowns.
The startup gained momentum after entering the Y Combinator Summer 2021 cohort. The accelerator’s global backing brought wider attention to the startup’s model and helped attract early investment. From its beginnings as a procurement tool, the platform gradually expanded into complementary services that many informal retailers typically lack.
From E-Commerce platform to fintech player
A key turning point came when Chari received a payment-institution licence from Bank Al-Maghrib. This regulatory approval enabled the company to offer financial products, including IBAN accounts, debit cards, money transfers, micro-insurance, and digital payment tools. This shift marked Chari’s transition from a marketplace to a broader fintech-supported ecosystem.
The platform now positions itself as a “merchant super app”, consolidating tasks that small shop owners usually navigate manually, which include: inventory ordering, credit access, and payments into a single interface. Chari has also adopted channels such as WhatsApp and USSD to make its services accessible to retailers who may have limited digital literacy.
The company has attracted steady investor interest since its inception. In 2025, they announced a $12 million Series A round, led by SPE Capital and Orange Ventures. The round was described as one of the largest Series A raises in Morocco and brought Chari’s total funding to approximately $17 million.
Today, the company operates in Morocco, Tunisia, and Côte d’Ivoire, with a workforce of more than 180 employees. It works with FMCG manufacturers, financial institutions, and partners such as Visa to support the digitisation of small and medium-sized retailers.
As part of its customer support structure, Chari runs a dedicated call centre staffed largely by women, focusing on onboarding new merchants and offering digital-skills assistance. The company’s regional expansion continues to formalise some aspects of informal trade by providing more predictable supply and structured access to financial services.
The co-founder’s work has earned her recognition within Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. She is an Endeavor Entrepreneur and has been featured on Forbes Middle East’s list of 20 Women Behind Middle Eastern Tech Brands. Sophia Alj represents the growing presence of women in North Africa’s tech sector, where representation remains comparatively low.
