Klasha Inc, a San Francisco and Lagos-based technology company transforming cross-border African commerce, announces the appointment of Nile Younis as Chief Commercial Officer.
Nile will be based in Dubai, and joins Klasha after a successful 10-year career at Mastercard, where he created leading go-to-market strategies across the MEA (“Middle East Africa”) region for real-time and multi-rail payments interoperability.
Most recently, Nile was the P&L business owner responsible for building and establishing Digital Payment Ecosystems at national levels for Mastercard in MEA. In the last five years, Nile and his team successfully digitised large cash flows across multiple sectors.
Nile has over 20 years of global experience in solution sales, product management and business development, which focuses on e/m-commerce alongside cyber and Card-Not-Present fraud solutions.
The appointment follows Klasha’s recent announcement of a $4.5 million seed funding round backed by Amex Ventures – its first investment in an African-focused startup – and Global Ventures, a leading MEA-focused venture capital firm.
Jess Anuna, Founder and CEO of Klasha, said:
“We are pleased to announce the appointment of Nile Younis as Chief Commercial Officer at Klasha. Nile’s global experience, most recently at Mastercard, will build the commercial infrastructure needed for more international businesses to tap into the African market via Klasha, and provide a seamless cross-border experience for African consumers. His wealth of experience will add immediate upstream and downstream value to Klasha as we bullishly scale the business this year.”
Nile Younis commented:
“Our goal at Klasha is to continue providing real value to our customers by addressing the vast opportunity available in the African e-commerce sector. By 2025, half of the world’s working population will live and work in Africa, but today only 30% of the over one billion population have ever made online payments. Klasha aims to create easy access to the world’s largest emerging and fastest-growing consumer market, and I am thrilled to have recently joined the energetic, driven and focused team of talent that makes Klasha so unique.”
Brought up in Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf, Nile’s experience includes working in the UK, Holland, Bahrain, Tanzania and the UAE.
In his new role, Nile will develop and execute commercialisation strategy at Klasha, including structuring and growing the organisation to drive essential market adoption of the company’s products and services. Nile brings new perspectives and cultural diversity to the organisation, will ensure adaptability in the execution processes, be accountable for profitable revenue growth, and work with the team to achieve Klasha’s core goal of bridging the e-commerce gap between Africa and the rest of the world.
