Zaki Mentouri is a poster child of the Brain Gain dynamic operating in Algeria in the last few years. Born and raised in Algeria, he left the country to further his university studies in France and gain some professional experience before coming back to the mothership and founding "Easy Relay", Algeria's best kept secret when it comes to logistics and e-commerce delivery. 

In France, Zaki went through some prestigious schools such as Ecole Central d’Electronique Paris ,ESSEC Business School and Telecom Paris. He built an impressive career in IT management across different sectors from Telecom to Fintech over 13 years. When he got back to Algeria, Zaki kept thinking about the promises of e-commerce and the challenges of its logistics. In 2016, he partnered with his friend Omar Naas to start Easy Relay addressing this very particular challenge. 

Easy Relay provides last mile delivery and supply chain management solutions for e-commerce providers and shops in Algeria. It's an online logistics service, which enables the shipment and delivery of packages from sellers to consumers, and a payment tracking service, which facilitates transactions. The company has built its own technical platform and relies on advanced tracking technology and data science to schedule and deliver packages in a timely fashion. 

Today, Easy Relay is one of the fastest growing startups in Algeria. The company covers 32 wilayas (administrative regions in Algeria), over 1,000 sellers (including the main e-commerce platforms in the country such as Jumia and Oued Kniss), and 60,000 deliveries / month. The covid period has boosted those numbers. 

In this sense, Easy Relay, and Zaki at its helm, are uniquely positioned to bridge the physical to digital divide in the country.