CAC trajectory
Peak → −67%
Mar 2025 to Mar 2026, monthly. Trough −70% (Oct 2025).
67%
Mar 25 Mar 26
Lead engagement, 2023 - 2026
Yassir. CAC 67%. CPI 62%. GMV 27x.
Three years operating the South African growth motion of a $1.4B North African tech unicorn. Quarterly thesis cycles, monthly scorecard reviews, weekly written delivery. The retainer model on this site was forged here.
67%
CAC reduction, Mar 2025 to Mar 2026
62%
CPI peak-to-trough reduction
27.4x
GMV growth, Jan 2023 to Mar 2026
The engagement
Three years. One growth motion. South Africa.
Yassir is a North African super-app at $1.4 billion post-money valuation, operating ride-hailing, food delivery, and financial services across multiple African markets. Jashughatt Media was retained from January 2023 to operate the South African growth motion.
The engagement covered paid acquisition strategy, creative production and testing, attribution rebuild, audience strategy, and quarterly thesis ownership against an agreed scorecard. The cadence was the same one productised on this site: weekly delivery, monthly scorecard review, quarterly thesis cycle.
The numbers below are audited against Yassir's own monthly aggregate reports. Both sides signed off on the data before publication.
March 2025
The leak.
By Q1 2025, customer acquisition cost had drifted to $48.76 against an installed base targeting under $20. Paid acquisition was burning rand without a creative system feeding it. Attribution had broken across two app-version migrations. The channel mix had calcified around a handful of high-CPM placements that no longer paid back.
The thesis for the quarter was unambiguous: compress what was being spent before scaling it. No new channels, no new creative pushes, no new audience expansions until the leak was found and closed.
CAC OVERSHOOT, MARCH 2025
2.4×
above the $20 target
CPI REDUCTION, PEAK TO TROUGH
62%
Apr 2025 peak to Aug 2025 trough
What was done
Seven workstreams. Three years.
Paid acquisition, attribution, and creative
Rebuilt the attribution stack after it broke across two app-version migrations, removing blind spend from the reporting layer. Restructured the channel mix away from high-CPM placements that were no longer converting. Introduced a second acquisition channel alongside Meta. Built a creative testing system — production, rotation, and retirement — so spend never scaled against stale assets. CAC compressed 67% over 12 months. CPI reduced 62% from peak.
CRM and customer lifecycle
Designed and operated the full customer lifecycle from install through registration, first purchase, and repeat. Tracked install-to-registration conversion, first-purchase conversion, and 4-week retention as weekly operating metrics. Built new-vs-returning user segmentation at the store level across 9 locations. 4-week retention improved from 24.6% to a peak of 41.9% over the engagement window — a +70% improvement in the retention rate.
Promotional strategy
Designed and managed the new-user coupon programme tied directly to first-purchase conversion, not issued as a discount without a commercial return. Tracked coupon spend against rand value generated per cohort weekly. Kept the promotional layer and the paid acquisition layer separately measured so each had its own ROI signal.
In-app merchandising
Managed the in-app merchandising layer — placement, sequencing, and rotation of featured content, offers, and store positioning within the app. Coordinated merchandising decisions with the promotional calendar and store-level performance data so the in-app surface worked as a conversion layer, not just a visual one.
Category and store-level management
Operated per-store performance tracking across 9 locations, covering first-time vs returning user splits and order frequency by store. Identified underperforming store-level conversion rates and fed the findings back into operational decisions. Tracked average daily orders per store as an operational health metric.
WhatsApp customer journeys
Built WhatsApp as a dedicated retention and re-engagement channel, separate from paid acquisition. Designed journey sequences for first-time users, lapsed users, and post-cancellation recovery. Campaigns on the channel converted at 85%.
Operations, automations, and customer support
Built a structured cancellation data layer — categorised by reason across session timeouts, fraud, payment failures, restaurant rejections, and support-driven cancellations. Separated first-time user cancellations from returning user cancellations to distinguish onboarding friction from systemic issues. Implemented admin-side systems that directly reduced volume in the highest-ticket cancellation categories. Structured the support pipeline with escalation logic so every support-driven cancellation carried a clear audit trail.
Results
Three trajectories.
Source: Yassir Y_Y Monthly Aggregate (GMV) and Marketing MM Summary (CPI, CAC). Charts plot every month; circles mark peak, trough, and current.
CPI trajectory
Peak → −62%
Peak Apr 2025, trough Aug 2025. Currently −56% from peak.
62%
Mar 25 Mar 26
GMV trajectory
27.4× growth
Jan 2023 to Mar 2026, monthly. Engagement window starts at left edge.
27.4x
Jan 23 Mar 26
Operating cadence
How the work shipped, weekly.
Weekly
Written delivery
Friday performance report. KPIs against baseline. What shipped. What did not. Blockers surfaced fast. No status meetings without an agenda.
Monthly
Scorecard review
Live review against the agreed scorecard. CAC, CPI, GMV, retention, plus campaign-level diagnostics. Decisions documented, next-month commitments locked.
Quarterly
Thesis cycle
New 90-day thesis chosen, agreed, executed. Q1 2025 thesis: compress before you scale. Q3 2025 thesis: scale what compressed. The cycle is what compounds.
THE SAME PLAYBOOK