Ivorian startup, Yelen, is betting on messaging-driven trade, offering payments, storefronts and logistics in a single ecosystem platform for sellers across Africa.
Across much of Africa, the centre of commerce has shifted away from traditional websites to more informal, conversation-driven channels. From WhatsApp to Instagram direct messages, thousands of small businesses now sell products through chat, manually managing orders, payments, and customer relationships.
For Ibrahima Sylla and Christian Okoth, this fragmented process presented a clear opportunity. Their startup, Yelen, launched in June 2025 and headquartered in Côte d’Ivoire, is building an integrated platform designed to streamline social selling.
By combining storefront creation, payments, and customer management into a single system, the company aims to simplify how merchants operate in Africa’s fast-evolving digital economy.
What you need to know
In less than a year, Yelen has already attracted thousands of users across multiple African markets, signalling early traction in a space that remains largely underserved.
Yelen is tailored for merchants who rely on messaging apps and social media platforms to conduct business. The platform allows sellers to manage orders originating from WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, including a feature that enables users to import social media posts directly into their storefronts.
At its core, the product enables merchants to create an online shop, collect payments, and manage customers from a unified dashboard. The platform supports multiple payment options, including cards and mobile money across 20 African countries.
Beyond basic functionality, Yelen is also integrating automation tools to help sellers respond to customer enquiries and manage interactions across multiple channels more efficiently.
However, Sylla says the company’s ambitions extend far beyond its current offering.
“The long-term vision is to build a full ecosystem where sellers can manage their entire business lifecycle, from conversations to transactions, within one platform,” Sylla says. “Even for products such as tools for sourcing goods from China and upcoming logistics features.”
From experimentation to product-market fit
Yelen’s journey reflects a series of iterations before finding product-market fit.
After leaving Google in May 2024, Sylla returned to Côte d’Ivoire in search of more impactful opportunities. His early ventures included Alpha Influencer, a creator marketplace connecting brands with influencers across francophone Africa. While the idea gained some traction, he concluded that the market was not yet ready.
He later took on software development projects before partnering with Okoth, Yelen’s co-founder and chief technology officer, whom he met through ALX Africa.
The breakthrough came from direct engagement with merchants.
“We were talking with customers (sellers) and asking them about their challenges. They told us about difficulties with collecting payments and managing sales across WhatsApp and Instagram,” Sylla says.
What began as a solution for a single client soon expanded through word-of-mouth referrals, providing early validation and prompting the team to fully commit to the platform.
How the platform works
Yelen is designed to simplify transactions for both sellers and buyers.
Merchants can sign up, create a storefront, and list products, whether physical or digital within minutes. A qualification process ensures that users are active sellers before gaining full access to the platform.
From a central dashboard, sellers can manage inventory, track orders, access marketing tools, and monitor payments. Customer payments are held in a digital wallet and can be withdrawn to bank accounts or mobile money services.
For buyers, the experience is straightforward. Customers receive a store link, browse products, place orders, and pay using their preferred method, including card, mobile money, or cash. Funds are held until order fulfilment, after which payouts are released to sellers, minus Yelen’s commission.
A hybrid business model with expansion risks
Yelen operates a hybrid revenue model combining subscriptions and transaction fees.
Its free tier charges a 10% commission per sale, while higher-tier plans offer reduced or zero commission in exchange for subscription fees. The company also generates revenue from a product sourcing service, taking a 2–3% commission on goods imported from China.
However, this expansion into sourcing and logistics introduces additional complexity. While it positions Yelen as more than just a software provider, it also exposes the business to supply chain risks and potentially lower margins compared to pure software-as-a-service models.
Despite these challenges, the company has recorded early growth. Since launch, Yelen reports 5,000 active stores across 10 African countries, approximately $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue, and nearly $50,000 in processed transactions.
Its user base is largely concentrated in francophone markets, including Senegal, Cameroon, Togo, Mali, Benin, Niger, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Competing in a crowded but evolving market
While Yelen operates within the broader e-commerce infrastructure space, it is positioning itself differently from global platforms such as Shopify.
One key differentiator is speed and simplicity. Sellers can set up a storefront in roughly three minutes, significantly faster than on more complex platforms.
Additionally, Yelen is built for local realities, supporting mobile money payments without requiring foreign business entities or integrations with services like Stripe or PayPal.
By embedding payments, sourcing, and logistics into its platform, Yelen is attempting to build end-to-end infrastructure tailored to African merchants, particularly those operating in informal or semi-formal sectors.
Industry leaders say Yelen’s approach reflects a broader shift towards building infrastructure that supports how people actually transact on the continent, not through formal websites, but through conversations.
Talking Points
It is impressive that Yelen has built a platform specifically for social sellers, addressing a key challenge for many African small businesses, managing orders, payments, and customer interactions across messaging apps like WhatsApp and Instagram.
This focus positions Yelen as a practical solution for real-world business needs, particularly for merchants operating in informal markets who previously had to juggle multiple tools manually.
At Techparley, we see how platforms like Yelen can accelerate digital commerce beyond formal e-commerce sites, bringing structure, efficiency, and professionalism to sellers who rely on chat-based transactions.
By integrating storefronts, payments, customer management, and marketing tools into a single platform, Yelen allows small businesses to operate with efficiency and scalability previously available only to larger enterprises.
As Yelen scales across multiple African markets, strategic partnerships, for logistics, product sourcing, or financial services could accelerate onboarding and strengthen its footprint. With the right support, Yelen has the potential to become a cornerstone of Africa’s social commerce infrastructure.
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