The story
Sophia Alj graduated from ESCP's Master in Management programme in 2015 and worked as a McKinsey consultant specialising in digital transformation. With her husband Ismael Belkhayat, a former Boston Consulting Group consultant, she noticed that their local shopkeeper in Casablanca had to leave customers waiting whenever a supplier's van arrived. In 2020 the couple launched Chari, an app that lets neighbourhood shops order the goods they resell for next-day delivery. Alj is co-founder and COO. Chari joined Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch as the first Moroccan startup in the programme, and by October 2021 Tunisia was already its second market. Because the grocery business earned thin margins but won the trust of shopkeepers who worked in cash, Chari moved into financial services. In October 2025 it became the first venture-backed Moroccan startup to hold a payment institution licence from Bank Al-Maghrib and closed a $12 million Series A co-led by SPE Capital and Orange Ventures. Alj has described the aim as turning traditional grocery stores into local points of sale for financial services.
